Divine Retribution
by plumeria-hi
Summary: ... Was how it all started. Was the law which governed battle, warped by the cunning talons of time to suit an age of lies and deceptions. But alas, it was also its end. Sit down to a story all Hetalians are familiar with, but today shall be spun through the hearts of those so intoxicated by war's lust, and ask yourself this: "Have I ever thought about it that way?"
1. 1 - The Divine Retribution of Honda Kiku

**I've just placed down a book with a particularly distasteful implication of the Sino-Japanese war, had felt a surge of grim aggravation, and was in the mood for writing something dark that did not involve poetry. Thus this was conceived, with no purpose but to vent darkness - my darkness. The darkness of judgement and war, through the eyes of one so poisoned with hatred. Divine retribution for all the things I don't like people saying; that I don't like to hear, but I write it all up again anyway. Divine retribution fueled by the stoked coals of ****hypocrisy.**

**Have you ever thought about it this way before?**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

**The Divine Retribution of Honda Kiku**

**•••**

"Kiku? Kiku, _please_ let me in!"

I choked on a sob and clenched the pillow tighter to my breast, rubbing the tears away furiously. There was no way I was ever going to talk to him ever again…

_CRACK!_

_BANG!_

I started from the mattress, barely missing the door pitch forward and crash to the floor. Its hinges were now beyond repair and the flimsy wood boasted a jagged scar down its middle. Finally, for the grand finale, Yao burst into our shared bedroom, faltering slightly as his eyes rested on me.

I paid no attention and fell back atop the covers, burying my wet cheeks in the pillow. I only looked up next when the crinkle of the drapes tickled my ears. A few moments later, Yao's arms entwined themselves around my torso.

I kicked myself free and staggered to my feet, screaming: "_No! Get away from me!_"

"Kiku…" He choked, springing after me off bed.

"_No! Go away!_"

"Kiku."

"_I never want to see you again!_"

"Kiku!"

"_NO! GO AWAY! GO AWAY!—"_

"_KIKU LISTEN TO ME!_" He tackled me to the wall and attempted to snare me in his limbs again. I shrieked, thrashing and bucking even as I felt his arms circle my abdomen, tightening into a vice I could never hope to escape. At long last I had lost all my strength in the scuffle, and even my voice had gone hoarse. As much as I didn't want to, I crumpled into his arms blubbering for the life of me, feeling the fatigue of a whole night's worth of crying finally wash over my head like a tidal wave.

He sank to the floor, taking me with him. "_Shhh_", he held me to his chest. In-between sobs, be it my imagination or otherwise, I could have sworn he was shedding a couple of tears himself. "Kiku… I-I'm sorry…"

"_'__Sorry' won't bring Long_ _back_."

With a final spurt of energy, I pushed at his chest and broke loose from his arms to dart for the far end of the room, where I bunched my knees to my chest and laid my chin on it, just so I can glower at him.

An uncountable fragment of time splintered away until Yao took one look at me, blinked tiredly, and laid the back of his disheveled head against the wall. "I had no choice, Kiku", he croaked, "Long is better off with him."

"Oh, he is, _isn't he_?"

I staggered to my feet. Yao flinched, staring at me as I took a tipsy step to him. "Long's better off with the _Occident_, _isn't he_?..." And raising my voice to the ceiling, I screamed: "_THEY'LL BE THE DEATH OF HIM, IDIOT_!"

"_NO_!" He got to his feet as well. "_We'll _be the death of him if he stays here! Kiku, were you _blind_ to what he did to my people!"

"Oh, _please_. And you think by selling our son off like that, you'll make him safer?

"Yao, get your head straight! He's closer to the enemy now, and not in the way I know you're thinking of!"

"They'll take good care of him. They'll teach him to be a better nation who can survive the era. They _wanted_ him…"

"To be raised as a _lackey_!" I hissed. We were no longer yelling at each other from across the room, but now stood at headlock, snarling at each other like feral animals. In a way, we _were _feral animals since the Occident invaded my husband.

But the savage in me had only chosen to surface properly now, the moment I heard he had sold Jia Long to the Occident after a so-called "Opium war" **[1]** had broken out. _Ha-ha-ha!_ Our youngest son; _for opium!_

Talk about a joke of a father.

"You seem to know everything, so tell me this: what was I supposed to do!"

"Keep fighting! Stand your ground like the dominant man in the house that I've always deemed you to be!"

"You don't understand, _Kiku_", he snarled, "these Occidental pests are cunning! They've got technology far more advanced than ours. They've got allies too…"

"_We're _your allies, Yao! Anh Phuong **[2]**, the children.

"_Me_. _I'm _your ally, Yao. You could have asked _me _for help."

"I don't need any help!"

"_And look where it got you_." I sobbed. Resting my head in the hollow of his chest, I wrapped my arms around his trunk. I'd never been one to do this frequently, even to the children.

But then again, war changes you. I see that now, after the war had disfigured Yao beyond recognition, into a stranger I've never known for the countless dynasties I had been by his side. And nowadays, I find myself tossing and turning every night, thinking to myself: if war had the power to warp someone as gallant and steadfast as my beloved Yao, then _Amaterasu _save us, how would our children fare in its merciless talons? And how much longer do I have, until it claims my husband from me for good, just as it did our Long?

And what chance did I, an island nation who had been isolated from everyone but that wretched Mogen and my family for almost a century, have the day it will surely come rapping at my door?

The waning moon will wax again, the flowers that scatter will surely reappear in the upcoming spring, and there will come a time when an isolationist country must open his _shoji _**[3]** to the world once more.

The prospect scares the living daylights out of me on one occasion too many.

After some time, Yao's arms found themselves firmly around my shoulders as well. "I do not wish to fight you, Kiku", his voice caught in his throat and I realized he was crying again. Before the Occident had came and hauled him out of isolation, Yao had been a stubborn crier too, just like me.

"This blasted era is tearing us apart", I murmured, "first they took you. Now Long. Which one of us will be next?..."

And at that moment, something in my brain clicked together.

"… I will be next", the truth came spilling out of my mouth before I knew it.

"Kiku, don't say things like that", Yao blanched.

But I wriggled free from his arms and looked him straight in the eye. "Oh dear _Amaterasu _**[4]**, I'm next!" I gasped.

"You say that, but…"

"Yao, can't you see it?" I paced around the room, "they've been targeting you and me all along!

"Yao! Don't you remember what happened some years back? Before I went into isolation from the Occident?"

Yao stared at me blankly, before a shadow of reminiscence crossed his eyes and he jolted. "They were the same ones now, aren't they?" He spoke gravely.

"Yes!" I noddled, "there was that Portuguese one first, and then that Arthur boy and Antonio arrived at the scene."

"And then that Braginski tried to mail you a letter…"

"And Mogen's still with me." **[5]**

"And I'm already a semi-colony thanks to that damned Opium!" Yao wailed, "great God, why can't they just leave us be! What do they want from us!"

"Gold, glory and gospel. That's all their crummy brains are filled with", I grunted, "I wouldn't be surprised if they'll break my _shoji _in with the naked corpse of a _kami_.**[6]**"

"Kiku, language."

"_BLUDGEON IT_!" I snapped, making Yao swallow thickly. I couldn't recount the last time I had snapped at him before the era of Occidental conquest had commenced. But it was all for the best: I was still beyond furious at my Mr. Wang for having given up Long so easily to the Occident and I wanted to make sure that the message came across.

"Well…" His voice sliced through my broiling reverie, "if they do come back… I'm not going to let them take _you _so easily, Honda Kiku."

My pupils dilated. I spun to face Yao with a start and was instantly met by his amber eyes.

Dull, dusty, _dilapidated _amber eyes.

Exhausted eyes.

_Anguished._

_Dead to my memory of the knight in red that I'd fallen in love with way back in the year five-hundred amno domini_.

And I realized, in a mark on the sundial that was much too late now, that I was speaking to a completely different Wang Yao. This was not the Yao who had prowess through an era so wanton with civil war, nor the Yao who had the inept faculty to entice the Occidentals of his time to his every whim and command with a simple flick of his blade. _This _was _not _the bold, charming teenation whom I had first set eyes on that day his junk had crashed into my beach, nor the gallant specimen who had held fast to our red thread, even when there were at least five Occidental brutes threatening to whisk me away and into their arsenals.

_THIS _was a pathetic, three-thousand-year-old semi-colony. This was a nation who had fallen victim to his own arrogance, and who had, in turn, succumbed to his weakness so that he was all rattling knees before nothing but a parade of the world's masters of facade and show.

But most of all, this was the very man who had sold our son to the jaws of a monster.

_And here he is, claiming that he will stop me from being a possession of the Occident!_

Oh, the comic reality of it all. I could just _die_.

"Kiku?" He squinted at me, looking as if he'd just seen a ghost. But then again, he had every right to be. After all, I was giggling like a possessed lunatic in the middle of the room. "Kiku? _Kiku_! Kiku, you're scaring me…"

He began to walk towards me. However, I beat him to it, pushing on until it was he who was walking backwards to avoid a collision. It was only when his back was finally tapered to the wall that I rapped him on the forehead.

"No, no, no", I shook my head, "come _on_, Wang Yao. Even you would know not to make promises you can't keep."

"I don't understand…"

"Save your breath", I glared, "because when the Occident arrives a-knocking at _my _door, _I _will be the one to help myself."

Yao raised his eyebrows.

I ignored him and continued my sermon. "Then, when I'm satisfied I've plunged enough holes into their facades, I'll commence a revolution against the Occidental conquest. I'll gather everyone I can get my hands on and form a marvelous empire, festooned by an arsenal of Divine Winds, the finest men and women in my land, and governed under none by the watchful eye of the great _Amaterasu _herself! **[7]** The children, of course, shall be a part of this marvelous empire, and so will a couple of cousins down south, I can only hope. And once my army has been assembled, I will harass and plunder and pillage every Occident who has done harm to us now. I will rob back all they have ever robbed from us, like Jia Long.

"And you too, of course", I gave him a brief peck on the lips, "and then you can lead the army as my co-nation-in-charge, and together, we shall all deliver Divine Retribution to those damned Occidental pests!

"And this I will accomplish alone, and without your help", I finished curtly.

However, my expression turned as sullen as a tempest when I saw the smirk on Yao's face. "This is all very well of you to dream large…" In one swift movement, Yao snatched me roughly by my forearms and whirled the tables so that I was the one subdued against the wall, and _he _was the one who still had control over his life. "But I don't think you've thought this through.

"Kiku, this is no longer a game with rules. These Occidentals are not the same as they were back when you'd first encountered them", his expression became dead serious, "they were nothing more than mewling kittens to us before because they knew we had the upper arm: we had more men than them, harvested plentiful crops compared to their pathetic rye and oats, more gold than all their women combined will ever see in a lifetime, and land for our abundant population to wield to our advantage. Hence, it was all very well for you to send them scattering with their tails between their feet by simply getting them to stomp on the face of their own deities. **[8]**

"But they've returned stronger than ever before, Kiku. They're _sly_, and they'd willingly set fire to a thousand deity's faces to get what they want; weasels, every last one of them. They'll take something you've never seen before and shove it up your windpipe, claiming that it's a poisoned dagger, and the danger of it is that you'll have no way of knowing if they're prattling lies or not. Then they'll put you through all sorts of hell: they'll make you sign papers, allowing more of their kind to flood in and send your people flooding _out_, and force you to assimilate to their culture whether you like it or hate it with your life. Before you know it, your people will be going into war for them, burning their own cultural heritage for them, selling love to them, slaving away for the food that goes into _their_ mouths – heck, the list goes on! And by the time you learn that their "poisoned dagger" had been nothing but an apple core, it'll be too late: they'd have ravished your nation to the bone by then.

"Face it, Kiku, you need _my _help, even if I don't need _yours_." The fire was already skittering the height of my spine when he snaked an arm round to the small of my back, pressing our bodies together. "You are still very new to this world, while I" – while he nuzzled the length of my jaw – "I've been suffering through the hell of it for more than a decade now. So why don't you let me show you the ropes again?" And tracing a path to my ear with his tongue, crooned into it with a voice as husky as a serenade: "_like old times_? _As your husband_ – "

"Yao." I shoved him away. He staggered back as if he were made of nothing and gawked at me, and when he did that, I'd felt something fiery shoot into my body and course through my veins. My hunch tells me it's "power".

And dear _Amaterasu_, it felt _good_.

"But you've forgotten, Wang Yao", I smirked, "that _I _am your husband too."

"By my laws, you are my wife", he frowned.

"But the laws of a semi-colony does not apply to the Empire of Great Japan." From a side-glance, I could see Yao cringe back. And there was that fiery poison again, making a beeline for my brain. _I wanted to keep it coming; keep more coming, even at the expense of slicing through Yao's rice paper-thin ego_. "Besides, now that I reevaluate the whole prospect of things again, it's such a silly thing to be calling me a "wife" when I am obviously a man as well; a little something you've nearly recovered a mere few seconds ago, isn't that right, _husband_?"

"Kiku, this is getting out of hand!"

"Or is it?... You know what? _You_, are _absolutely right_."

And dusting my _haori _**[9] **down, I started for the gaping hole which had once been the doorway to our bedroom.

All the while, I could feel Yao's glare drilling into the back of my neck. "Kiku? _Kiku_, where do you think you're going!"

"I'm not sleeping tonight. I want to see the children", I gingerly stepped over the fallen door on my way out. "Oh, and Yao?" I glanced at him over my shoulder.

He raised his eyebrows in question.

"We can always _both _be husbands if you like. At least until Divine Retribution has been delivered, and Long returned to us unharmed. Then we can reevaluate my position in the household as your "wife" if you deem it necessary."

With that said, I slipped into the corridor with no mind on waiting for an answer from Yao.

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><p><strong>The good news was that by the time I had finished writing this up (took two whole nights, mind you), I wasn't feeling so angry anymore. <em>Ah<em>, writing can do you such wonders, can't it? Besides, apart from the highly offensive part about the "chink", the book was actually one of the best novels I've read in weeks...**

**Oh, but on the other hand, these grim things were actually pretty fun to write as well (a darn good break from a poetry spree...) if not somewhat edgy too. I-I don't know! It felt as if I was mocking Yao through Kiku's skin... _Oh well!_ Diving retribution was the theme of this story, and since it is that way, mark my words people I WILL DELIVER IT! Tomatoes for Yao today, and tomatoes for Kiku tomorrow... Or the next day. Or next week (I don't know, I'll probably have to get back to you guys on that one... _If _I can make the perilous journey to my writing desk first, that is). Therefore, before I go off and get myself into another dirty mood to write a sequel for this one, I am deeply, TRULY sorry if I have offended anyone, which in that case you are free to pelt me with Internet-toes right now.**

**As a bonus, I might actually pay for those Internet-oes too.**

**-Plumeria-hi**

**P.S. the part about the absence of poetry had been a LIIIEEE! I wrote one poem in one of the new styles I'd picked up while writing 'Their Beautiful World' which I'd sandwiched in between this story. If you've spotted it, then you've made me a very happy one here, and thank you!**


	2. 2 - The New World is Gritty with Lies

**Three reasons to give Plumeria-hi a virtual hug tonight: a) her back is about to collapse from all the weight that is being crammed into it by school, b) it's 2:07 AM, and c) ... I can't think of anymore. Does that mean I can still get a virtual hug though?**

**Aaanyways, chapter 2, brought from me specially for you! However, this chapter might be a little bit more... Resentful, compared to the last chapter (and longer too), so I thought I might just send you kids off with a little warning beforehand:**

**1) In this chapter, Kiku will be dissed. Yao will be dissed. Arthur will be dissed. Francis will be dissed. The whole Occident will be dissed... And to some extent the whole Orient will be dissed. But mostly the Occident, and Kiku. Just know I'm not trying to pick on anyone, and that I love each and every one of you guys, okay? So I'm so, so, SO sorry if I made anyone cry... I'll give you a virtual hug to make up for it if you like?**

**2) Prominent pairing: still ChuNi. Oh yesh. But there are going to be nearly-translucent ghosts of other pairings too, such as: a tiny bit of Ameripan, a teensy, WEENSY bit of Chuugirisu (heheh, didn't see that one coming, did you?), and a TEENSYWEENSYTOTTYWOTTY bit offff... *gaaaasp* RoChu. That's right. I actually experimented with ROCHU (yay for tolerant me!). Again, I can assure you that these will be significantly overshadowed by ChuNi, and that you'll probably never have guessed they were there if I've never mentioned it, but if any of these pairings irk you...**

**3) This fan fiction is rated M for a solid reason now. Why? A whole paragraph about birds and bees, just for you. Just because I have finally acquired enough exp. points to be able to write something like that now.**

**4) The notes and references have been separated into their own chapter at the end of the story.**

**So, what are you waiting for? RUN, RUN, RUN!... No, wait! Come back and let me give you a virtual hug first, please!**

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><p><strong>The New World is Gritty with Lies<strong>

The morning my "husband" returned after he was denied from me by Alfred's "much-abhorred presence, but don't tell him or he might send more black ships after me", he was never truly the same person again.

"You look…" I died for a few seconds by the doorway just staring at him. "You look different."

"It's the good kind of different", he remarked. He then proceeded to enter the house without slipping his shoes off first like he normally would.

Though it wasn't as if the mess will bother me so much anyway.

After all, with the conquest of the Occident taking its toll, I'd barely had time to do anything as trivial as cleaning so that the floorboards were gritty and black under the soles of his loafers. The wonder of it all was that he acted like he never noticed a thing.

As I closed the door behind me, Kiku whirled to face me, threw his arms to the ceiling, and cried: "_I HATE IT!_"

"So what you just told me was…"

"Lies, lies, lies. This new world I've awoken to is festooned with grit and lies", he yanked his shoes off with the vibrant contempt of a camp-commander to rub the soles of his feet against the floorboards. "Yuck", he frowned. "Yao, when was the last time you did your cleaning? Your house is festooned in grit too."

Ah, the wonder of it all. As soon as I'd shut the doors to the rest of the world, here was the Kiku I knew: the Kiku who would never let dust gather in a corner, and who always had a thing or two to say about the unfamiliar.

Before I knew it, I was doubling over in laughter. Kiku didn't take it too well. "Wang Yao, is there something I should be aware of?" He glared.

"No difference at all", was all I said as I leaned against the door in smug satisfaction. "No difference at all, Kiku."

"Yes, yes different", he insisted. "And the worse of it is I don't like it one bit."

"So why didn't you come here like you always do? For instance, why didn't you just come in a _kimono_?"

"Really Yao? A _kimono_ in the summer?"

"Okay, maybe a… A _haori_-less _kimono_? A _yukata_? **[10]**" He tittered behind a hand. "Well, anything but THAT!"

His sweet smile faltered. "You mean to say you don't like it, Yao?" He whimpered.

_Uh oh_. Have I upset Kiku in any way by saying that? Without a moment to lose, I brought myself to quick-scan Kiku's unusual outfit of the day from head to toe: a turtle-necked uniform of a raven which synchronized with his lustrous hair, accentuated with gold everywhere. Gold buttons, gold clips where his gold-laced collar parted slightly at the length of the jugular, and even the cuffs snuffing his slender wrist. The vest and the trousers were close-cropped and complimented – no, practically _showcased _his slimness to the world; an (admittedly) exhilarating change from the robes which would have concealed his figure for only the eyes of those he deemed befitting to peep.

Having taken it all in, I suddenly found it impossible to breathe. "I-I suppose it's, uh, somewhat alluring to your…"

"Lies, Yao", he flashed me a sardonic grin. "_I_, for one, hate it with my blood and soul. I always feel like everyone's staring since Alfred refused to let me go around in anything else. **[11]**"

_They ought to_, I thought as a sliver of hip snared my eyes when he darted past and deeper into the house. Shaking the afterimage of it away, I jogged after him.

"Kiku, where are you going?"

"I want to see Yong Soo and Ling. Where are they?"

"Ling is playing with some children in a nearby village", I tailed Kiku into the children's bedroom.

"Oh?" Kiku frowned at the emptiness which greeted him. As if in a trance, he walked to the bed nearest to the door and began righting its pillow and quilt. Strange to say, that bed, still pristine and untouched since the year 1841, was Jia Long's. "Are you sure it is safe, letting her run off like that with Occidentals aloof?"

"She'll be fine. She's been playing with them for two months now."

"And not with Anh Phuong?"

"Anh Phuong is with the Occidentals. The French one", _the lecherous one_, I grimaced. Years of knowing Anh Phuong had taught me of what a hardy teenation she was; tenacious and strong-willed, with the strong scent of _yang_ lingering behind the fine lady she had blossomed to be. But oftentimes I worry about how she will fare under the jaws of an empire as fierce in their ways as Bonnefoy's. "I can't afford her playing with any one of their colonies."

"Even Anh Phuong?"

"Even her. You yourself know how trusting and naïve Yi Ling can be. If Bonnefoy tries anything to lure her into his empire by coercing Anh Phuong into a scheme…" _Sigh_. "I can't afford to lose another one. Not since Long."

"So you've learned. I'm proud of you for doing so, and yet", a wistful smile skirted Kiku's expression. "Ling must have cried, the poor thing. Did she?"

A chuckle escaped my throat. "Our daughter cried herself to sleep for a week", I moved from the doorframe to embrace Kiku from behind. "In fact, she cried so much that Yong Soo even went so far as to sleep with her until she could calm herself down at night. They've stopped squabbling on a daily basis years ago."

"Oh!" He gasped. "I should have been there to see it for myself.

"And Yong Soo? Where is he now?"

"He went down to keep an eye on Ling", I told him. "I expect he must have human friends in the village as well, with all the time he spend there looking after his little sister."

"That's good. A great country must always maintain as close a tie to the people as possible, and that is especially in need now in a time when Orientals are constantly being snatched away to become servants to the Occident. You never know when you might need an army of patriots to fight for your back; the more patriotic the better, obviously. So it's a comfort to the heart, to know that Im Yong Soo is growing to be the fine nation he is…

"Well! I've intended for Yong Soo and Ling to be present, but no matter! We shall just have to discuss it for ourselves and fill for the children later."

With that, he wrenched himself free from my arms and steered me to the edge of Long's bed, where he made me plunk into it so that the quilt he'd spent three minutes smoothening became more creased than it had ever been since 1841. I gave an involuntary flinch as I landed on the cool mattress, not prepared in the least for the emotional blow that would thwack me with sitting on my long-gone son's bed for the first time in years.

"A discussion?" A discussion on what?"

He halted abruptly in mid-pace and blinked at me.

And before I even had time to breathe, rushed me against the bedpost and grabbed my shoulders to haul me forward.

"_Divine retribution_", a dark grin broke across his features.

It only took those two words to send my heart launching so high that it clogged my throat, making it impossible for me to say anything else as Kiku perched himself daintily beside me. "Since the black ships arrived, I've spent my days silently observing the Occidentals who wander my land."

"Alfred?"

"Not only him."

"Then… Arthur? Mogen too, obviously."

"_And _their people to boot", Kiku huffed. "Like termites, flocking into the nation ever since I signed that God-forbidden treaty. It's a wonder Europe could have housed them all, if you asked me.

"But it all worked to my advantage in the end, for it gave me the golden opportunity to observe them in close proximities. So, back to the subject: I was observing them, and I learned something that all these Occidental pests so far have in common."

"And that is?"

"Their purpose for coming here to Asia."

"For foreign market and vendors, I presume?"

"That was in the seventeenth century. It's different now", Kiku shook his head.

"So… No more big-nosed Westerns scuffling each other for gold?"

"No, it's still about gold." I sagged my shoulders. "But the prominence in their initiatives lies elsewhere.

"Apparently, the Occidentals have their eyes set on who can build the larger empire. Call it an arms race with nations if you may, but it appears that a lot of these Occidentals have their minds set that the larger their empire is, the stronger they are in the competition. 'Social Darwinism', they call it."

"Like bagworms with a mind", I smirked.

"Precisely."

"It's sick."

"But it does make sense."

I shot Kiku an incredulous stare. Since when did anything from the Occident make sense? I thought we Orientals had all came to the verdict ages ago that the Occidentals were the queerest, most backward nations that Mother Earth had the utmost misfortune of ever conceiving!

I spared no time in reminding Kiku of this. He simply shrugged. "Just because something is backwards, that doesn't make it completely implausible."

"I beg to differ."

"Can't you at least hear me out first! Look, I don't like it that they're carting us off to be their personal attendants as much as you do, but these Occidentals actually have a point: with more colonies backing them up, not only do an abundance of resources become just out of arms reach – and really, who can say otherwise for a continent as affluent as Asia? – but colonies can also be manipulated as a threat."

"You mean they'll send Long into war against me behind my back!"

"Well… No. I hope not." I buried my head into my hands with a groan. "Of course we won't let them, Yao!"

"I'll willingly go into a third war with that Opium and his sleazy scoundrel friend if he tries!"

"And wager Ling next? Yao, don't be brash!" He slapped my hands away and cupped my chin in his fingers, forcing me to look him in the eye. "The master Sun Tzu once preached that the art of war concerned strategy and deception **[12]**. Yao! This new world is no different to that of his scrolls. Lies and deceptions govern this eternal battlefield we are shackled to. Pompous decisions are no longer affordable… Oh, great _Amaterasu_, Yao, don't cry…"

"I can't help it." Before the Occident had came and fed poison to the people who made up my very essence, I had been a stubborn crier. But now it appeared that Kiku was the sole member of this broken household who still had a steadfast grip to the trait. It brought me great shame as his husband, but in these times of darkness, I couldn't help but feel that those tears are the only things I have left.

_And even that I have no more control over…_

After about two minutes of good, silent sobbing, Kiku seemed to have made up his mind, for he coaxed me to lay my head on his lap. I did so with no complains, rubbing my wet cheeks against his thighs. There my tears formed a dark stain.

But then it sank into the fabric as soon as it appeared, and the tears were nowhere to be seen.

"Cry if it helps", he whispered.

"I hate it! I hate it to the ends of the world and back!" I cursed through my teeth. "Ever since that wretched Opium took Long from us I've been nothing more than a dog on a leash to him! Follow my orders or forget seeing Hong Kong ever again, he said." My voice died into a repentant whisper. "You have no idea of the hell he put me through; the things he made me do, Kiku."

"Do it if you must, to protect your nation and Long."

"_But that's just it Kiku!_" I lurched from his lap. "I don't want to do it! I feel like a pathetic, sleazy, good-for-nothing loser, having to bow my head to his every whim and command, but he just keeps threatening me with Long whenever I so much as say no to cleaning up after his mess! I don't want anything to happen to Long. I want him to come back to us someday well and healthy, but the only way I can keep anything from befalling on him without us around is… _ARGH!_" I punched the wall in frustration.

Kiku sighed, averting his sight to his lap. "That's what I was afraid of", he mumbled. "Arthur can't do anything to take Long's life: launch a massacre, and there'll still be a group of nationalist survivors. Some handfuls of people evacuated overseas. A spouse or a mix-blooded child stowed somewhere amidst his own people. Arthur cannot take him so easily because Long, no matter if he's still a small child, is a nation. We've already seen to that." I peered at him hopefully. Kiku reciprocated it with eyes as icy as Death himself. "But there's nothing to stop him from hurting our son. He's using that as an alibi to subjugate you, and that's the true danger of this 'Social Darwinism'. They use their colonies as a threat to silence everyone else."

"Mutiny! Vile, deceitful mutiny!" I wailed.

"But that's not the strangest bit of it."

"Good grief, do I _have _to listen to this?"

"You've got no choice, it's a crucial part of the plan!" He snapped. "It turns out they also participate in this arms race by going together with allies."

"Oh? But I thought they just did that for reinforcements in the case of an onslaught?"

"Apparently not. They also manipulate alliances to loot colonies together."

"Hmph", I pulled a sour face. "So it does all that for them, doesn't it? Though it's hard to imagine any nation as obstinate as the Occidentals putting a lick of effort for anyone but themselves."

"Don't underestimate what little sympathy they have, Yao. Some of them were married too before the era of Occidental conquest, you know?"

"Yeah, but do these alliances actually _last_?"

"Good heavens rarely", he chuckled. I gave him a questioning frown. "You see, it is because the Occidentals are strict about who they make friends with. For instance, their allies must watch their backs, must be able to watch their own backs and possess capabilities up to their own levels. It is when standards such as these aren't met than an alliance, no matter how amiable or the depth of its history, is terminated and forgotten."

"Okay, okay!" It sufficed to say that I was officially sickened by all this talk of Occidentals and their cheating ways. "You've made your point: it is an arms race, and the Occidentals sometimes hunt in packs. Now, how is all this going to play out in the grand scheme of things?

"_Tell me Kiku, how is this going to help us get Long back?_" I trained his fingers into my own and brought it close to my heart.

The next minute, his fingers clenched back with a force that betrayed their slim forms. Kiku was smirking when I looked up. There was a certain degree of vile darkness to that smirk that I've yet to see on him in all the dynasties we had stood at each others' side.

"A little bit of _this_", I gulped. "A tiny pinch of _that_.

"_And lies_", he grinned madly. "Fight fire with fire. _We're _going to give the Occidentals a little taste of their own medicine."

"Just a 'little' taste, or…"

"This is how it'll work", he sprung off Jia Long's bed and began to pace around the room. "The first thing I'll do is I'll sync up to their levels. With Mogen and Alfred's help, I'll gradually begin to assimilate to the ways of the Occident: their aesthetics, their diplomatic strategies, their practices and innovations. I'll even restructure my government if I have to. Since the eighteen-fifties alone, we've already collected more than a thousand manuscripts, hired a great deal of scholars and officials and more than a half of the urban population had successfully underwent modernization", he gestured to his uniform. "I figured the Occidentals are too pig-brained to accept anything but their own culture as the norm. Why, just look at what they've done to you, Yao! You were the most opulent and sophisticated of us all, and yet they were impudent enough to dub you "savages" and pillage your land. If the most affluent Asian kingdom had not been enough to please them, then surely, I'll admit it, a meagre isolationist like me will be nothing but gravel under their feet, unless my people and I clad a disguise and pretend to be just like them. We despise it with our blood and bones, but hopefully it'll be second nature to us soon.

"You following me up to this point Yao?"

I nodded begrudgingly, turning away so that Kiku wouldn't have to see my sullen face. Before those Occidental pests had came a-crawling, _my _culture had been the fad amongst Kiku's people. It was I who had taken Kiku, then a teenation too, back to China with me by junk to learn how to manipulate the arts, recite poetry, erect the most pristine pagodas to garnish the gardens he had a talent for cultivating, and convert his language into written texts. Even the thought of him pretending to dote on another culture, much less a culture as rancid as the Occidentals', was enough to cause my blood to boil with jealousy.

"Now once I have thoroughly mastered the ways of the Occidentals, it's smooth sailing from there. I can easily shake off Alfred's treaties and proclaim myself an independent empire. Then I will feign war with you…"

"WHAT!" I sprung to my feet and shook him. "Kiku, you can't be serious! I-I thought you had no intentions of ever going to war with me!"

"I don't."

"So _why_!" I was close to tears. Kiku must have sensed this, for he gingerly plucked my hands off his forearms and, in turn, placed his hands on my own, and said: "I won't really be going to war with you, Yao. It's all a deception, so that my empire can lie and say they've invaded you and made you _my _colony."

"Your c-c-c…"

He silenced me with a sensual kiss. "_So that no one can take you away from me_", he murmured. "I'm opting to list Manchuria first, since word's catching fire that Braginski has his eyes set on it."

"I can ward off Braginski just fine."

"_Not _with Arthur's and Francis' fists still clenched around your neck, you won't", he hissed. "And besides, me fake-conquering you will pose other benefits to our Divine Retribution as well. After I've "invaded" the cultural behemoth of the Orientals the Occident will immediately recognize my empire as a force to be reckoned with! Then I shall seek allegiance with a strategically-selected few. I'm thinking Arthur first…"

"Oh, I understand now!" I grinned. "So that you can persuade him to give Long back, right!"

But a frown told me otherwise. I allowed my short-lived mirth to wilt into nothing as he shook his head no. "That part comes later, Yao. Think about it: if I ask for Long back so early, Arthur will get suspicious and bring our true intentions to light! Then I'll be forced to cede Manchuria to Braginski, sign more treaties than I began with and be subjected to colonialism by _Amaterasu_-knows-who. When that happens, who will go after Long! Yao, you've got to stop thinking so recklessly. The Occidentals know we have history, remember?"

He raised his eyebrows complacently. I bit my lip and dropped my sight to the floor. He must've thought I'd capitulated, and thus he continued. "Arthur is the most prominent Empire in the Occident."

"More like the pest of the pests!"

"Yes, put it that way if you wish. But nevertheless, he is sure to help me win more colonies. And you know what that means, don't you?

"… My prominence in the world map will be finally achieved! These filthy Occidentals will be puppets in my fists then", by God's name, Kiku was actually _squirming_ for the first time since an unfathomable number of dynasties ago! All the while I stood rooted to my spot by Long's bed just watching him, in two minds as to whether I should be happy or terrified for my immortal life. "With my colonies behind me, I'll ravage and smite every last one of them, liberating the Orient and sending them scurrying for cover under our wrath!" He cantered to me and squeezed me into a cold embrace,.

"And you came here to discuss _what _of my nation and the children, exactly?" I squinted.

He blinked, as if he'd momentarily forgotten. Then he pulled away from me with a sigh. "Remember the night when the Occident had claimed Long? When I said I would execute Divine Retribution without your help?"

I nodded plaintively.

"Well", he shrugged. "I've changed my mind. I need you to do something for me."

"Is this about faking that war?" _I need you to do something for me_. If only Kiku had uttered those words the same night Long had been smuggled from our family I would have jumped out of my skin with joy. However, with my mad husband quivering like a possessed lunatic before me, all I wanted was to scream "NO!" and be done with it.

Kiku nodded grimly. "If we simply fake a document listing the legitimacy of the war, the Occidentals will believe none of it", he said. "That way, we'll just have to stage it.

"In the year 1894, ten years from now, gather the largest troop of soldiers you can find and garnish each man with the most sophisticated armour in your disposal, and not to forget the finest weapons Chinese blacksmiths can forge. I will dispatch my own army as well. Then we will meet in Korea – we can say it was religious instability that lured us there – and then…" I swallowed thickly, silently knowing what was to come. "_We will fight_. We will fight until the last man goes down. **[13]**"

"But it _will _be a staged war, right?"

"Of course. The war itself will be staged, because you and I already know it will happen, and you and I both intended for it to happen whatsoever.

"But beforehand, you must not speak a word of this to _anyone_, Yao."

I gawked at him. "You mean to say…"

"Not a word, not a peep, not a _sound_. None of the men must know", he shook his head slowly. "The scuffle will make the war more realistic."

"But it'll throw off the whole purpose of this "war" you're pining at!" I huffed, my patience dwindling by the second. "Kiku, I don't understand the point of all this anymore! You said I mustn't spill a word of this to my troops, and yet beforehand you tell me my troops must be abundant, well-equipped and the best my land can afford!"

"My imperatives still stand."

"Then that means you're just pitting yourself in the battlefields!"

"No I won't. My troops will win", he deadpanned.

I was about to snap at him otherwise when a thought occurred to me. It was a flashback of the two wars I had to wage against Opium and that scoundrel Bonnefoy. Both wars I had lost, partially because I was tired, and partially owing to my ravished national repository and my distraught population.

But when the Occident had first began their conquest on me; when they had managed to fall the greatest kingdom of the Orient in less than three centuries; did I not have all of those things the other way? More population. Land to nurture crops and feed my people, and leaders appointed by the will of heaven.

The strength of a bold, young nation who had seen the world bow down to him over the course of three thousand years.

And yet the Occident had the knack to convert me into a coolie, didn't they?  
>So if forces that were educated in their ways could bring down my past self, and if those forces now under the guise of Kiku was opting to do the same again, imagine the state I'd be reduced to under their hands?<p>

Suddenly my body felt weak.

I plunked onto the margin of Long's mattress, clenching the bedpost to keep from keeling over. And as the grim truth began to sink in and the rest of the curtains were parted for me, I shook my head slowly.

"Y-you wouldn't. Not in a million years…"

"It's for the best, Yao", he said it without a trace of remorse in his tone. "And afterwards, you will sign a treaty which will cede Manchuria, the Liaotung peninsula and Ling to me and liberate Yong Soo so that I may take him too."

"NO!" My eyes flew open. He can't take Yong Soo and Ling! He just can't!

"Why not?" He frowned, as if reading my mind. "Yao, I've been their parent for almost their whole lives. I've even nursed Ling since the day you found her washed up on that island! So why don't you trust me with them now?"

"I-I do trust you in this Kiku", _but something in me was screaming that that was well on its way to being a lie as well_. "It's just that, well, they're the only ones I have left…"

"And even they will be gone if I leave them under the hands of a semi-colony." I cringed at the unexpected cruelty drenching that last word. He'd called me a semi-colony time and again, and it'd hurt every time. It was as if Kiku was condemning me to shame for being the husband who had also been one of the first to buckle under Occidental invasion, every time he tacked that wretched word into my forehead. "Acknowledge it Yao: the children will be much safer with me.

"And besides, if you choose not to play along anyway, I will have no reason to proceed with the rest of the scheme. I will simply focus on fending my people, the children and my land and I will never get the chance to retrieve Long.

"So are you in this or not?" He came to a halt before my face. I looked up and said nothing. I was transfixed on his eyes. There was something lurking within them, something I've yet seen on them in all my days of knowing Honda Kiku.

And at that moment; at the spur of the moment before the sundial could shatter into dust; I realized I'd been trying to talk sense to a completely different Honda Kiku. This was not the darling, tender-hearted nation who'd captivated my heart the day Divine Winds hurled my junk into his shores. This was not the same "Queen's country" **[14]** who had cultivated whole topiary masterpieces out of his giving hand, and had courteously obeyed every word of his guardian-emperors with coy reverence. _This _was _not_ the motherly figure who had cradled my children to sleep; whom I had kissed with a flaring passion on his soft, blossom-scented lips for the very first time under a full moon.

_THIS_ was the tattered ghost of a nation who'd been intoxicated by acrimony. Who would carve servile retribution into the jugular of a deity, if just to quench his senseless lust for power.

But most of all, this was the wife who'd forgotten where his water came from. This was the man who would willingly scar his eldest son, not only by using him as an alibi, but also by having his civilians inevitably slaughtered in innocence in a staged war. This was the mother who deem it all the best for his children to go without a father for possibly decades on end.

_And as for Long_? Ha-ha-ha. He was now nothing more than a last resort in the elaborate rising of prominence for the Empire of Great Japan.

I couldn't do this anymore. I'm sickened by this _thing_, who was nothing more than a pretty-faced, porcelain doll, claimed from me by the demon of war. I could tell as he slipped away from my arms, even as he regarded me with glimmering madness swimming in his eyes.

I narrowed my own and said: "I'm sorry Kiku. I don't want to do this."

I stood up and brushed him away. All the while I can feel his stare burning into the back of my head as I trailed to the window by Yong Soo's bed.

"But, b-b-b-but Long…"

"I'll find a way to rescue him myself. I lost him in that war, so it's my responsibility to bring him back. I don't want your help, nor will I need it. My opinion from that night still stands."

I whirled from the sight of the grey heavens outside and braced myself for a fight.

Only to have my shield clatter to the floor at the sight which haunted my eyes next.

He had not done it since the night I had broken the news of Long's ceding to him. But here he was, doing it so silently that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't turned around. Hot tears surged profusely down Kiku's cheeks, dripping to temporarily stain and vanish in the black of his uniform. Kiku rubbed at it all furiously with his hand.

"I should have known", sobs strangled his voice. "I should have known…"

And with that, he ran out of the bedroom.

It was at that very moment when my body ceased to obey my command. Instead, it urged me to sprint after Kiku, even at the expense of knocking Long's bed a little off of its bearings. Before I knew it I was screaming his name too.

"Kiku! Kiku, _please_!"

"Lies! This new world I've awoken to is knee-deep in LIES!" He cried.

"Kiku! Kiku, listen to me!" I tailed him into the sitting room. "We'll find a way out of this together, just not through war!"

I finally made it close enough to snatch him by the wrist. He shrieked, breaking away with a force I never knew he possessed up until now. "_Don't be foolish_", he retched.

The distant rumble of thunderclouds was amongst us now, drowning our ragged breathing. A flash of light erupted from the window to paint his face into that of a skeletal nightmare. I could taste the petrichor in the air.

"Do you know why I came to you, Yao? DO YOU!"

_CRASH! BOOM!_

I answered in silence. He began to sob harder. "It's because I thought you were the only one left! The only real thing left in my world! _Look at me!_" He yanked at the rim of his shirt. "Even_ I _am a lie! A filthy, phony, screwed-to-the-soul LIE! I don't even know who I am anymore!"

"Kiku." "That's not true, Kiku." All of those things I was aching to say. And yet I kept quiet, stifled by the heart-wrenching sight before me as Kiku's knees buckled and he collapsed onto the cold floor.

"It was selfish of me", he murmured, "but I thought if I saw just one real face in the new world, and if I keep that with me until this one can pass and another world can begin, I would make it alright. That no matter how ravished I become as an empire, if I get to glimpse the only real thing I know every single day, then I believe I can always return to myself one day when I no longer have to pretend to be something I'm not." _CRASH! BOOM! BAM! _The faint belting of rain could be heard beyond the rafters now. "Do you know that I'm literally not supposed to be here, Yao?" He sniffled. "It wasn't written on any treaty, but after we became "friends", Alfred made me cross my heart that I'd never come to see you nor the children ever again. Your place is with us now Kiku, he'd said, forget about those weakling countries you call 'family'. We heroes can provide you with so much more. He believes I am currently in my room, studying the cotton industry of the Occident." He shook his head darkly. "The punishments will be severe if he ever finds out where I stole away to."

Having emptied out everything which had plagued him since the day he disappeared from me, Kiku gathered his limbs to his chest and cried for the longest I've ever seen him do it. All the while a million and one emotions churned in my being: anger to Alfred, who had the cowardly disposition to ban Kiku from seeing me without being brave enough to chuck it into a treaty I can at least try to revolt. Bitter resentment to the Occident, for ripping to shreds the one thing that meant the most to me; my family. But most of all, a pang of guilt which coursed through my veins at the sight of _my_ Kiku, so small and frail on the floor in the gloom of the sitting room.

Kiku was the most versatile of us Orientals to change. The trait had been destined to be his, for while I'd had no reason to practice such skills of tolerance, Kiku had lived a life which constantly clamoured for improvisation: the first was when I had crashed into his beach and altered everything he ever knew of the world, and now again with the arrival of the Occident.

But even when he was flexible, Kiku was also the most sensitive of us to threat. Being an island nation surrounded by ocean, with no land to run to at short notice in the face of an assault and a high risk of being cornered by enemies, had nurtured that highlight of his personality. I can only begin to imagine how those fabled black ships of Alfred's, with their looming faces and funnels constantly a-puffing like a dragon's nostrils, had tapered Kiku's defensive persona to the brink of insanity.

Thus it was only natural that Kiku would be in the shattered state he was now. I had allowed that to slip away from my better judgment, blinded to me by the eminent threat that our Long was still in and the prospect of another war – even worse, a war with the person whom I had long dedicated my red string of destiny to.

With this in mind, my features immediately softened. I made my way silently to Kiku and planted myself cross-legged before him.

"Forgive me Kiku", I murmured. I began enveloping him in my arms: the first to rest on the small of his back and the second to go under his knees. Then, lifting him up, I hugged him to my body and… Cried. Cried with my husband. Shared the pain like we did the night Long disappeared.

Kiku wailed harder, throwing his arms around my neck. I cupped him around the shoulders and told him softly: "that's alright. Cry if it helps."

So we stayed that way for a long moment, just listening to the midsummer monsoon which threatened to collapse the foundations of my ancient home. Come a couple of hours and Kiku had cooled down significantly. We relocated to the bedroom then, bantering and laughing amongst ourselves as if the battlefield raging beyond this world we're holding onto with all our might, this reality we've conjured as our own, was nothing but a distant nightmare. Life was as peaceful as the steady song of the downpour that pattered against the roof tiles in those few hours of dreamy consolidation.

The fervour of life only returned not more than a half of an hour after a short conversation centering around the children. I had glanced fondly down at Kiku, when the lust I didn't know was building inside of me suddenly proved too heavy a burden to carry. Kiku must have sensed it too, for he smiled in embarrassment as I leaned over to steal a chaste kiss from his lips. Then, another, followed by two more with tongue to boot. Eventually I earned the sound privilege of unbuttoning the first set of uniforms Kiku had ever worn, limbs were tangled and the senses aroused and flared, giddy to explore the kinks and the contours we had to go without for far too long.

All the while Kiku had not spoken a word of Divine Retribution, so that I'd assumed that he had forgotten all about it until a certain point after our little show of messing around.

"Yao?" He snuggled into the hollow of my chest.

I looked down blearily. "Kiku", I tightened my embrace.

"Remember the plan I had hatched? Divine Retribution and all that? You forget all about it, for it means nothing to us now and I won't act on it anymore."

Still foggy from the pleasure of lovemaking with Kiku after such a long hiatus from it, I nodded without giving it the least of my concerns.

By the time I'd awoken, the rain had ceased to drum on the roof. All was silent – eerily silent – and it was very late into the night. The first thing I'd administered was that my arms were achingly empty. Kiku had disappeared.

I sat up in bed and tried to get my eyes adjusted to the dark to find him, but even then Kiku was nowhere to be seen. I gave up a good couple of minutes later, and was just about to resume my sleep when I noticed the quilt that'd been thrown haphazardly over my feet.

I'd flung this back and was greeted by a square piece of parchment. This I held up to the moonlight, realizing that there was a note scribbled onto it. A note in bubbly, slight-off traditional Mandarin, of Ling's work, and which read as follows

"_To daddy;_

_It's me, Yi Ling. Big Brother and I came home and found you and mommy asleep in your room. Big brother said it'd be rude to wake you up and that you must be tired so he made me promise to leave you to sleep. He also got out the quilt. He said I could write the note._

_The two of us are very happy to see that mommy has returned from that long "country business" thing you were talking about. Is he going to stay with us forever now, daddy? Did he bring Long back too? If he did, can we see him as well? I'd love it if we could. Big brother says he'll try to be nice for a whole month if he gets to see too._

_Please don't forget to tell mommy to stay with us forever now that he's home when you see this, okay daddy?_

_Your loving Yi Ling._"

I sighed. Now I'd be disappointing my children even before they could wake up in the morning. The piece of parchment slipped quietly from my fingertips and wafted to the floor, where Ling's messy penmanship gave a final wink goodbye before the square flipped itself over.

And as I stared at it, my eyes grew wide. Written at the back of the parchment in slick, delicate characters I'd recognize six feet away was a second note. It wasn't signed like the first, but I didn't need three characters to know who the culprit was. I hastily scrambled for the note to thrust back into the moonlight, and slowly, I began to read:

"_My dearest Yao,_

_You were sleeping so soundly that I haven't the heart to wake you up. Do forgive my impudence, but I must leave for Japan now if I am to keep Alfred at bay._

_It is nearing the eve of the dusk as I write this note. I want you to know that the children are safe and asleep now; when I had woken up in the evening they were already home, so I made them their dinner, accompanied them in play for a while and tucked them into bed. I've cleaned up as much of the house as I can before I left. If Ling wonders where I am in the morn, tell her I have to go now, but that I promised we'll see each other again very soon. I regret leaving so early, for the warmth that resting in your arms again brought to me will remain until I can see you all once more. Let's meet again someday soon, alright?_

_Ah, and one more thing. I believe I still owe you something for the events of this afternoon_."

The letter came to a brusque conclusion after that last character. I inhaled the lingering scent of rain-swept valleys deeply into my lungs and re-read the piece of parchment again.

And again.

Again and again and again until I could have sworn Kiku's voice was crooning it into my ears.

After I had read the letter enough times to be able to recite it by heart, I made myself plunk back into bed. The now-slightly-crumpled piece of parchment I pressed to my heart.

Gradually, my thoughts began to unravel themselves. They ran to Ling and Yong Soo, safe in their own world of play and asleep in bed. They ran to Long, _li_'s away from anywhere his father can watch him grow. What was he up to now, I wondered. Is he faring well with all the other British colonies? Or was he huddled in the corner of a room somewhere, sobbing to himself and wishing to be whisked away and back to his family? Most importantly, was he safe and well-fed?

At long last my thoughts descended a hundred miles due east, by Honda Kiku's feet. Honda Kiku. The love of my life. An angel wielding a _katana_. It's funny to think that I once believed I knew everything there was to know about him.

Now I can barely recognize him anymore. It was as if he had one foot clinging to his "true self", and the other scrambling for a sound threshold in the empire he'd willingly disfigure himself to be. One moment he was my own and I could read him as deftly as ever. The next he'd be worlds away, and his presence would both bewilder and frighten me. "Lies and deceptions", he'd said. "Even I am a lie", he'd said.

So now the question was this: which of him was the true lie, and which of him isn't? Had he been posing as the Honda Kiku I'd grown to adore for ages past, or was the imperialist marionette he was carving into his identity the fraud to blame? And of all the things that escaped his lips that afternoon: spine-tingling recollections of the shrewd ways of the Occident, and not to forget his grand scheme for Divine Retribution. Were they simply paradoxes conjured by an inevitable dash of madness and vengeance, or did Kiku mean every word he said?

And last but not least, what could he'd possibly meant by telling me that he owed me something for the events of today?

I got all the answers I was looking for a few years later, digits to the year 1894, when he came to my door brandishing his _katana_ and sobbing profuse "I'm sorry"s. I learned shortly after that that _katana _was meant for me. To carve a scar down the length of my spine and a deeper one which would haunt me for the rest of my immortal life. Kiku had lied to me. He lied when he said he had no intentions of going into war with me, and probably did when he claimed he hated the ways of the Occidental clods. He also lied when he said that he'd terminated his plan for Divine Retribution; lied when he said he'd be targeting the Occidentals alone.

Kiku had lost himself in a world so gritty with lies and deceptions even before he approached me that afternoon.

I'd just been too true to him to see it coming.

* * *

><p><strong>How do I end something like this with something amusing? How do I try and whip up some horrible pun now, when there's a fat chance someone's probably glaring at me halfway across the world? TELL ME GUYS, HOW!...<strong>

**You know what? Why don't you let me get back to you on that one, while I end this authors note by thinking about how to end an authors note?**

**Ha-ha-hah. _Have you ever thought about it that way?_**

**-Plumeria-hi**


	3. 3 - A World of Difference

**The author's note is gone... And I am feeling terribly uncomfortable without it. **

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

**A World of Difference**

**•••**

"A toast… To Divine Retribution!"

A month ago, Alfred's cries would have sent us all into throngs of hosanna. The clink and chink of the flagons pierced the air as the five heroes of the world chugged down their merited share of victory. But even then I would only have a round or two; the youngsters could have the rest of the barrel for all I care. After I was feeling significantly lightened, I would usually steal out of the conference room and leave them to booze themselves silly. God knows what happens in that chamber after I leave.

It wasn't that I had no sense of fun. It was just that I knew better than to act like oafs. I may be a part of their alliance by name, but there was no way I was anything like them. They were youngsters, high on life and easily tossed astray by victory, while I was their honourable elder. Even if I had been the first Oriental to fall in the hands of the Occidental conquest. Even if I had been the strongest before that, and then nothing but a slave to the upper hand for a couple of decades preceding, I was still their superior.

It certainly wasn't because I didn't know how to have fun anymore either; not because I was traumatized by betrayal, and the long, thin scar that ran down the length of my spine, keeping me awake for many nights with their incessant pain. Perhaps what was most painful about it was the fact that Kiku had been the one to give me that scar with his sword. His own hands…

_Sigh_. Kiku wasn't the reason I refused to chug myself to cloud nine either.

He just couldn't be.

While it was true that Kiku had practically left me for dead, his betrayal had presented some benefits to me, as ludicrous as it may have sounded a couple of decades ago. The pain of the heart and the spine had opened my eyes. Served as a wake-up call to what China must do to remain the great kingdom he was. And after a great deal of moping and blubbering, I decided that if Kiku wanted to try his hands at subduing the modern world through its unwritten laws of lies and deceptions, then I could just as well stop him.

You best watch out, Honda Kiku. You want to play the hero with the blood-lathered fingers, don't you?

Well, two could play at that game.

And look where it got me now? I had marched out as one of the victors to the greatest war mankind's history had ever bore witness to. Me, Wang Yao. The semi-colony. The one who had been blinded for three thousand years by decrepit love. It was only fair that I was the one celebrating and leaning against the wall to watch as Alfred rubbed it in his face.

And yet, as one month dulled by in an almost suffocating tedium, that victory was now nothing but a rusting medal on the wall. The same applied to the rest of us: Arthur, Francis, Ivan, who simply grunted our "hurrah"s and "ding-dong, the witch is dead"s. Alfred had boasted about it for so long that neither of us can be bothered with guising our nonchalance anymore.

Arthur pulled a face at me and rolled his eyes at Alfred. I quickly joined in, and we shared a round of silent cackling. Arthur had been the hell and pain of me before we agreed on an informal truce, so that I could participate on the Allies' side with him. Contrary to my belief, we had not attempted to maul each other even once the whole time we had fought as one rank. Arthur Kirkland; the country who got along with the semi-colony he had treated like grit under his boots? Well, who would have thought!

The flagon Alfred had once brandished so proudly, too, had long been replaced by a triple-decker, monstrous excuse of a burger, which the boisterous brat wolfed down in two bites. Everything about Alfred was super-sized: super-sized ambitions, super-sized ego, and super-sized burgers. Super-sized mouth with not the common sense to chew before swallowing.

The rest of us muttered our responses and turned back to whatever we had been doing. I would usually be hunched at the far end of the table beside Ivan, scribbling an old poem or a recipe for crabs at the back of my documents.

But today, I decided that things would be different.

"Alfred."

Said nation paused with a burger held to his jaws. "Yao?" He scarfed it in one gulp.

I started from my seat. Beside me, Ivan gave me a flabbergasted stare.

"Yao, where are you going?" He wanted to know.

I ruffled his hair and smiled. It'd been a while since I'd ruffled anyone's hair, nor gave anyone a smile. I had not done anything like that to anyone else since Kiku slipped out of my arms, to never return as he was when he came. I had not done it to anyone but Ivan since Yong Soo and Ling had been forced to pack up and live with their mother across the sea, nor when Long had been ripped away from the family.

"I'm just going to go see someone for a while."

Ivan giggled, so much like a soul who was accursed to be stunt as a child, and nodded.

"Who, Yao?"

"… Someone, Ivan. Someone."

When I turned my back to him, I could have sworn his face darkened.

"Alfred", I came up to him with my palm outstretched. "Keys. Now."

He squinted at me. "What for?"

"I want to see someone."

"Yao, there's a hung dinger of 'someone's aboard on the vessel. Narrow it down, will ya, jock."

I sighed. Alfred would clobber me in after this, but I knew I had to try.

No.

I knew I _wanted _to try, and that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't.

"I want to see Kiku."

_SLAM!_

Three pairs of eyes and mine darted to Arthur, who'd rose from his seat to regard me with his crisp emerald daggers.

"I oppose!" He declared. Arthur withdrew his fist to his side and marched to me.

Nevertheless, I stood my ground. "Why?"

"You two might be up to something behind our backs", he spun to face Alfred indignantly and jabbed a finger at me. "For all we know, they could be plotting a conspiracy!"

"Please, Arthur, if Kiku and I had wanted to conspire against the lot of you we would have done it ages ago!" _We had wanted to do it ages ago_, I thought bitterly. _But it was all thwarted, just because I was innocent enough to hope that war didn't have to be the solution in this world of lies and deceptions_. I would never admit it out loud now that I was an Allied Force, but on lonely nights casted by the heavens for two, I would splay myself in our bed, or a sleeping bag, or anywhere I could have a whole night's blessing of peace, and think about all that could have happened if only I'd decided to tag along. "You still don't have it in you to trust me after all the time I'd spent lugging your sorry arse?"

"To be frank, Yao darling, we've never really trusted each other that much to begin with", Francis chortled, before a glare from Arthur silenced him altogether.

"I don't like this either. Capitulation or not, Kiku is still an enemy to us. I don't feel good knowing that Yao still has some connections with him", Ivan growled. He stared at me desperately, but I ignored him.

I wanted to believe that I hated Kiku. I wanted to believe that I despised him with the blood and soul of me. And yet there was a miniscule part of me that was wailing fervently at the back of my head. I knew that it would never be silenced unless I get to see Kiku again; see him smiling at me again; see those kinks and contours I knew by heart and loved with every bit of me.

It's terrifying, but my guts told me it was "yearning".

"I don't see why not."

Now it was Alfred's turn to be in the limelight. Arthur made a sound like a cat choking on mice head.

Then he cried: "ALFRED, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MARBLES!"

"I ain't got no marbles on me yet, pet", Alfred reached over to grab another burger.

It was snatched out of his hands and lobbed halfway across the room before he could devour it.

"Dude, that was the three-hundred and thirty-seventh to my last burger!" Alfred's face was the comical imitation of a trout out of water.

"To hell with it! You've already eaten more than that black abyss you call a stomach can take!" Arthur retaliated. "And I don't see any reason why we ought to let Yao see Kiku."

"Well, news for you: I don't see any reason he _can't_", Alfred sniffed.

"Either you're too dumb for your own good, or your kidding Alfred."

"CLAM IT, BEARDIE!" He fired at Francis. "Geez, why do you guys have to be a buncha wheezers all the time, yeah? Look at the calendar: it's September!" Alfred jabbed at his imaginary almanac. "The wars are over, for fuck's sake! Kiku is beaten and battered and under my surveillance, and his weapons have been confiscated and locked up in a place _no one can access_", he gave me a sideways glance, as if I would be asking for the keys to the Pentagon next. "What harm can he do!

"What harm can _they _do!" He wagged a thumb in my direction.

Arthur's mandible detached itself from his skull. But when nothing came out, he clenched it with a sullen pout.

"Besides, what's so wrong if Yao wants to see his little brother?"

My eyes flew open. Had Alfred just said what I think he did?

Kiku was my apprentice, my honour student, my most trusted acquaintance, my lover and finally, my husband. Now he has become an enemy.

_But my little brother?_

Now that's something I don't remember ever telling him.

"Oh, yes. If you put it that way, I might be of a similar mind to Alfred", Ivan shot me a twisted grin. "Yao wants to see his little brother. How sweet."

I stared at them both funny. There was definitely something fishy going on, and I wished I knew what. A glance to Arthur's and Francis' empty stares told me they were wondering the same thing.

_Chink!_

I jolted back to my senses and caught the key that'd been flung to me before it could hit the carpet. When I craned my neck, Alfred gave me a nod of consent.

"He's resting in cabin four-one-three", he said. There was a certain degree of malice in the unfazed azure of his eyes, but I couldn't see it behind the thick rims of his spectacles. "Don't dally now."

I stared at him long and hard. Then I looked down at the keys, real and jangling and clutched in my right-handed grasp.

Without a second to spare, I pivoted on my heels and darted out of the conference room. Alfred and Ivan had been awfully kooky when they called Kiku and I "brothers", and it bugged me that there might be something playing behind my back that I knew nothing about.

But as soon as I passed the lacquered mahogany of the double doors to the conference room, the nagging suspicion dissipated without a trace, and only one thought rang fervently at the back of my head.

It was the thought of seeing Kiku once more.

And although I would never admit it, I was squirming to the bone.

* * *

><p>Descending a flight of sea spray-polished stairs brought me to the "four hundred" cabins. I followed the row on my right as it shrunk a number every time I passed a door: <em>four hundred and fifty-eight… Four hundred and thirty-three… Four hundred and fourteen<em>.

I took five steps forward and spun to face a wooden door identical to all the others I had passed; each and every one fresh with the scent of white paint. As white as the flag Feliciano had thrust into my face before the Allies had descended upon him, to finish him for good. Feliciano had been the first of Kiku's allies to fall.

And Kiku. My tenacious, daring, beloved Kiku. Was the sole survivor by the end of the fifth month **[15]**. Alfred had followed through to his words for once when he promised he'd "make this last one count".

Now Kiku was in great physical pain, recuperating ever so slowly behind the door which loomed before me. "_413_", the bold, gold-accented numbers lurched at me, as if daring me to face him for the first time since Nanjing.

Before I could chicken out of it, I thrust the key I'd been clutching the whole journey here into the keyhole and gave it a sharp turn.

The door creaked open in an instant, allowing light from the corridor to seep into total darkness. My eyes followed the beam that ran into the middle of the room. I could make out a carpet similar to the wine-red one which embellished the conference chambers, but nothing more than that. It gave the room an eerily empty feel to it; the feeling you get from having to walk past a graveyard in the dark hours of the night.

Brushing those thoughts aside, I parted the door wider: an armoire, a dresser and a bureau came into light. I slipped into the room and without looking back, fumbled around for the light-switch. _Click_. A fluorescent bulb flickered to life above me, bathing the whole cabin in luminescence.

A mediocre cot of rusted metal bars stood right before where I hovered now, contrasting greatly with the hospitality which cloaked the rest of the room. It's like Alfred couldn't be bothered with purchasing decent bedding for his former enemy and chucked in any odd cot from an infirmary tent instead. From my vintage point, a quilt had been pulled up to almost, if not quite, the whole length of the cot.

There was also a slightly noticeable, anthropomorphic lump protruding from beneath the quilt.

For a moment I had a panic attack. I was going to meet Kiku. I was going to be reunited by my husband again after nearly eight years of avoiding him; after almost a decade of denying I had anything left in my icy heart for him, and declaring to Arthur and Francis in drunken stupors: "who is that, this Kiku you speak of? I know nothing of him! I know nothing of him, hahah!" Should I back out of it now? Should I make a break for it while I still have the chance?

… No, Yao. What are you afraid of? You're afraid he would thrust his _katana _into your rachis again? Alfred could be a scatterbrain in his good time, but he definitely meant it when he said he'd completely disarmed Kiku. And besides, you've won the war. Despite all he did to you in the war, you were the victor, and he was the failure. If anything, Kiku should be afraid of you!

So what are you afraid of, Wang Yao? _What are you afraid of!_

"Nothing", I breathed.

I retrieved the keys and nudged my only means of escape shut.

Thrusting my fists into the pockets of my breeches, I started for the cot. On closer examination I saw that someone had left a stool at the margin of the bed. I decided that it would do for a temporary perch and plunked into it, crossing a leg over my knee so that I could rest my elbows there.

I stared at the lump beside me and gulped. The quilt really did cover the whole length of the bed, for one reason or another. Now, I knew from the many antics my allies got up to that the Occident was definitely not a place for the faint of hearts – or anyone who sought a peace of mind, for that matter; but this was beyond disturbing, even for someone who had been on the verge of death by two atomic bombs.

Kiku reminded me too much of a corpse set for cremation.

And even though the anxiety was coming back, I didn't approve that he looked like the guest-of-honour at his own funeral.

_Breath in… Breath out._

_Breath in… Breath out._

I sprung from the stool and grabbed the margins of the quilt, flinging the top of it away.

And just like that, a large chunk of me jarred loose and melted into oblivion.

Kiku had been laid parallel to the edge of the cot, his hands mummified and folded neatly above his chest; lidded eye cast to the ceiling. It was amazing how nothing much had changed about him. The almond-shape of his eye, a daintily pointed nose and full lips, set into skin as creamy and smooth to the touch as porcelain. The only difference was that his full lips were bee-stung and cold, his skin was paler than ever and a swab of bandage had been taped to his right eye.

It was at times like these - times identical to the millions which flooded our mangled past - when I couldn't help but remind myself of how beautiful Kiku was. He looked just as beautiful as he did the day I had flung his veil over that ceremonial headpiece, after we had been declared husband and "wife"; an elaborate scheme to deceive the prejudice of fate, just so we could continue on the path that was set by our red string. My Kiku, just as beautiful as the many nights I had stayed up late just to tuck the blanket away from his moonlit face, to gaze at the only one who had meant so much to me in my two thousand years of immortal life.

It was at that moment then it hit me why I'd been so afraid to see Kiku eye to eye again.

It was because a part of me, the part of me which had trailed off with all the animosity I had ever feigned for him throughout the war, knew that if I ever saw Kiku again I would betray all I had known for the last eight years of my life. All the effort my people and I had mustered to scheme Divine Retribution upon the Empire of Great Japan I would betray. What smithereens of trust I had established with Alfred, Arthur, Francis and Ivan, my only trump cards in an alien world of lies and deceptions, I would betray. The people who made up my very essence, whom I knew still harboured bitter resentment for the Japanese soldiers since Nanjing, I would betray. The Byzantine façade I had posed for what seemed like my entire life, filled with faux declarations of my utmost hatred and revulsion to Kiku, would fade into a place I could never hope to find for the rest of forever. If I ever saw so much as Kiku smiling for me, I would be abandoning this new world I had shed blood and sweat to hone out of nothing.

Just because I would fall in love with Honda Kiku all over again.

But what was there to do now? It was too late to go back to that world, now nothing more than a chapter of my life which I'd cast into the flames. No amount of wallowing on my part will ever give it back to me.

And besides…

_What's so wrong about a world where I can feel the thrills of love again?_

I smiled to myself, loopy at the prospect of going back to love. Going back to the world I had left to collect dust when I'd first joined ranks with the Allied Forces.

Loopy at the prospect of coming home to Kiku.

With my fingertips, I traced a path up his porcelain-perfect cheeks, reveling in the smooth texture I haven't realized I missed so badly up to this point.

"Kiku", I lisped, brushing his raven locks with my fingers. "I've returned for you. Yao has returned for you."

And as the last word trailed off my tongue, Kiku's good eye twitched.

I withdrew my hand with a start. I didn't dare breathe as the eye twitched some more. Then fluttered open. Then blinked at the ceiling in a dazed stupor.

Finally, Kiku craned his neck to me slowly. "Y-Yao", he breathed. His voice had gone raspy, losing that rich, sultry depth to it, and even the soft, underlying timbre had dried away. It shattered my heart to hear it, but strange to say, I was grinning from ear to ear. Soon the fine details of Kiku's face disappeared, blurred by the tears that were collecting at the corners of my eyes.

"Yao", he reached a trembling, mummified hand to me. It landed on my cheeks, where it stayed. "Dear _Amaterasu_, it's really you this time", he flashed me a feeble smile. "I saw you for eleven nights, Yao. Eleven nights you came and sat by my bed, and told me those very words: Kiku, I've returned for you. Yao has returned for you. But whenever I reach out to touch you, you disappear and I am alone. Alfred said I was going delusional", before his expression turned solemn. "Or maybe I am going delusional. Maybe I'm just progressing to a stage where I think I am touching my hallucinations."

"Well, why don't I try and prove otherwise?"

With that said, I leaned into the cot and locked lips with Kiku for the first time in eight years. I didn't need his permission to deepen it, and we stayed that way for as long as possible; lips bridging our entity into one; tongues curling and lapping gleefully, before breaking away for air.

"Definitely not a hallucination", he sighed wistfully.

I tickled him under the chin, making him gasp in delight. "you'd better believe it", I beamed.

Kiku reciprocated my gesture shyly. Already, the pigment was returning to his skin, and it waltzed my heart in a way words can't explain just seeing my chrysanthemum **[16]** come back to life after a long, deathly winter.

However, that chrysanthemum exploded into a shower of petals, as tear after tear seeped uncontrollably down Kiku's cheeks. His breathing came in snatches (the fact that it was still raspy didn't help either) as he began to sob.

"I'm – _hic!_ – sorry Yao! I'm – _hic! Hic!_ – sorry for everything!" He wailed, then cried in anguish, denoting that the business with the raspy breathing will have to end soon if Kiku didn't want his lungs burst.

"Kiku, enough of that", I spoke softly.

Comforting Kiku was a feat at the time. I couldn't wrap him in an embrace or crawl under the quilt to envelop him in the warmth of my arms, and no matter how many times I opened my mouth to try and say something, nothing would come out either. Many times my personification betrayed the nation he was supposed to be by loving Kiku more than anything else in the world, but even when I loved him, I knew I had a sharp, coarse tongue, which often spoke before the rest of my body could act. I didn't want it - didn't want me - to hurt Kiku now, more than ever. It was at times like this when words he'd uttered to me in our younger days, "sometimes it's best to say nothing than say something you'll regret later on", made sense to me.

So it was a good thing that he was easily coaxed into silence in record time, with a couple more kisses and caressing on my part. Come a few minutes later and I was slumped over his cot, fondling his bandaged palm with a thumb. Kiku did not look at me, but fixed his gaze emptily to the ceiling instead as he croaked:

"I am a failure, Yao."

I shook my head slowly.

"Don't tell me I'm not", he shook his own with some difficulties. "I've failed everyone I had ever wanted to save from the conquest. I failed to give Yong Soo and Ling the blissful childhood they deserved, and I failed to retrieve Long by forgetting him in Arthur's empire. I've failed Feliciano and Ludwig, by not being able to rescue them in their time of need. I've failed my people, by crumbling down before their eyes and letting them die in millions, when they had expected so, SO much from me", he choked back a sob. "So many good fathers fell sacrificing their lives for me. So many good mothers and children wasted their days doting on a nation who couldn't save them from the bombs, even when he had the chance to call them off. Call the whole war off and leave it at that. **[17]**

"But do you know who I failed the most, Yao?"

I knew, but said nothing.

He looked at me with his one good eye, welling with tears that were too stubborn to fall, and sighed. The fingers in my grasp squeezed back. "You", he rasped. "I've failed you the most."

"Not in my head, you never did."

"And you're still kind enough to tell me otherwise", he chuckled bitterly. "My, my. Tell me, how do you do it, Wang Yao? Still have the heart to love the man who betrayed you more ruthlessly than any Occidental brute ever could?

"Do you know what I did the morning after I left you in1884, Yao?"

"No, Kiku."

"I went straight to my studies and set about rewriting my plans. It was obvious to me that a spirit as righteous as yours would never approve of the war. I think I might have even secretly known it the day I snuck back to you, but I needed you to tell me yourself.

"But anyways, I made changes. Most of the plan remained the same, as you knew. We fought our first war in 1894", my brows knitted at the recollection. He sighed as well. "And I got Ling and Yong Soo. The only stark difference was that it wasn't a plan that involved you, but was a plan to get you before anyone else could. Plans to participate in the war with you soured into me competing against the Occident to steal you first, before anyone else could take you away from me."

"And you did it", I shrugged. "Not in the best way, obviously, but you did it."

"It's the truth."

"So was…" I mentally wracked my brain for a softer way to paraphrase the question that'd been nagging me since Kiku brought the subject up. But no amount of "_bei_"s or "_rang_"s **[18] **could ever turn something as harsh as the worst years of my life into baby-talk. "Was… Was Nanjing a part of that plan then?"

He gasped. I averted my eyes, torn between feeling ashamed and hurt by the past. For the longest five minutes of my life, Kiku and I shared the company in suffocating silence. I would have assumed that to be the end of the line if our fingers were not still woven tightly into each others'.

"I would never dream of doing that to your people Yao", he whimpered.

"So why did you do it?" I needed to know. Even though it'll hurt me to bring up such a vile subject in my history again, I needed to know, more than ever, why my Kiku would hurt me that way if he'd never dream of doing such a thing. Why he would let his men ravish my city, to decapitate and defile the men and women who make up my entity?

"Because I was foolish", a tear broke loose and trickled down the side of his head. "I was foolish because I allowed the war to consume me; the true me that would never dream of inflicting such barbaric crimes upon your people. The power I got from beating the Occidentals to you got to my head, and I learned the hard way that when you are exposed to so much as a gossamer of power, you'll be hungry for more and more of it. You become a gross mirage of yourself, and then the power will always scavenge for opportunities to prove its existence. For the power that haunted me as an empire, that lust was targeted to you.

"I don't want to blame it on anyone anymore", he began to weep silently. "Not you, nor the Occident, and not even that wretched power I never want anything to do with ever again! I'm awake once more, and I know I didn't have to do such a thing to you if I wasn't weak enough to break under something as stupid as a lust for the upper hand.

" I would never dream of doing that to your people, Yao. Find it in your heart to believe me someday, even if it's hard now", _it was_, I gulped. _Even while I'm hopelessly in love with you, it's the most difficult thing in the world_. "But what's important to admit is that I did it. And I regret it with every drop of blood in me, I swear. I realized all that near the end of this war, when the power began to seep out of me and gave me back."

He then asked me, ever so softly, to lift the blanket away from his body. I obliged without hassle, and following his next instructions, undid the bandages that concealed his trunk. I was nearly finished when something underneath the last layers of bandages snagged my eye, and I retched back with a gasp.

"Kiku. Tell me you didn't", I felt light-headed.

"I deserved it. If a nation couldn't die, at least I deserved whatever was the closest alternative. It was even better actually, for a fiend like me to suffer half-death; the real thing would be too merciful." He wrenched the last slivers of bandage away, revealing ominous streaks of cinnamon down his midriff. It didn't take a physician to know that they were only a few months old.

Without realizing it, I was sobbing for the accursed nation-life of me.

"Why, Kiku?"

"I need to be punished for my sins, Yao! I need to be punished, so that I don't hurt you like that ever again! But most of all, I need you to forgive me by knowing that I truly regret my actions…"

"WHO CARES ANYMORE!" I threw myself over him and cried into the bare skin of his shoulders.

A few moments to come, I felt his arms slowly coil around my neck. He nuzzled into my military jacket and began to cry as well. In between sniffles I could catch sobs of "I'm sorry"s and "forgive me, Yao"s. I don't know why, but next to no time later I began blubbering the same things to him.

But then…

CRASH!

I lurched out of the intimacy and spun to the door, making Kiku's head plunk back atop the mattress.

Alfred hovered at the doorway to the cabin, a spare key glistening almost smugly in his fist. His face was contorted into something like anger; something like horror.

The piercing blue of his eyes swept to me, then to Kiku, naked from neck to waist on his bed.

And with a voice that was vibrant in its frustration, he boomed: "YAO, WHAT THE FUCK!"

"Alfred, I can explain", Kiku started to hoist himself into sitting position.

His efforts were cut swiftly as Alfred pushed him back against the mattress. "As for you! The doctors said you couldn't be exposed to light for another week, remember? Why'd you let him turn it on!" He chastised, reaching for the bandages and winding them sloppily around Kiku once more. His knuckles brushed one of the scars in the process, eliciting a yelp on Kiku's part.

"Cut that out, Alfred! Can't you see you're hurting him?" I dived in to wrench the bandages out of Alfred's grasp, but he shoved me away.

I recoiled to gawk at him.

"You'd do best to scram, Yao. Go back to the conference room", he growled, not looking up from Kiku as he retrieved the quilt from the patch of carpet by the bed.

When I still didn't budge, Alfred's neck snapped up at me, and he roared: "GET THE FUCK OUT, WILL YA!"

I frowned desperately at Kiku, but he simply smiled and mouthed in mandarin: "do what he says. I'll be fine".

But I knew for a fact that Kiku was not "fine". A part deeper than any doctor can reach in him was bleeding, and only my presence will be able to nurture it back to its former glory. The same applied to me and the pain that gnawed fervently at my guts.

But I knew at this point that there was nothing to do but begrudgingly obey.

Thus I shot Alfred an unnoticed glare and started for the door to the cabin. As I made the journey back to the conference room, I reached into my pocket and revealed the chain of keys, flicking my way to Kiku's. This key I wrenched away from the others and tucked into my breast-pocket.

I was already scheming my next visit to cabin four-one-three in my head, and there was nothing Alfred, Arthur, Francis or Ivan can do to stop me.

* * *

><p>When I'd burst through the double doors, Arthur, Francis and Ivan stared at me as if I had sprouted a second head. Ivan was the first to smile at me, his lilac pupils following me as I ambled wistfully into the room.<p>

The smile was quickly replaced by a scowl as I subconsciously plopped into Arthur's seat.

Francis came over and leaned against the table beside me. "So! What did you do this time, Wang Yao?" He folded his arms across his chest with a smirk.

I squinted at him.

"We heard Alfred yelling his head off", Arthur shoved me out of his seat.

"Does Kiku have anything to do with it?" I recovered from the blow, only to walk right into Ivan. "Did you try to avenge our people? Did you maul him? Did you scar him like he did us? Was any blood or weapons involved? Is that why Alfred was screaming?" He grinned at me sweetly.

Over his shoulder, Arthur noticeably tensed up. Francis, on the other hand, was guffawing his head off.

"Or maybe they got too intimate to the point where Kiku's scars burst right at the seams!" Ivan flared up at this, and was about to curse him in Russian when Francis protested. "What! There's blood in that too, if it makes you happy."

I was about to tell him that making risqué or gory interpretations of things wasn't making _me _happy when Alfred stormed into the room, rendering the rest of us uneasily silent. I noticed that he had a good mind not to make eye contact with me as he took up his place at the head of the table.

The rest of the meeting stumbled past in tedium, despite being shorter than the anticipated time because of "something that just came up, like, this afternoon" on Alfred's behalf. I thought this was peculiar, but nevertheless felt relieved that I wouldn't have to spend the remaining hour in Alfred's hot seat. Ignoring Ivan's invitation to a couple of flagons at the top deck, I scrambled for my documents and started for the door with a good mind to spend the rest of the afternoon planning my next visit to Kiku, when…

"Yao."

I froze in my tracks. Looking over my shoulder, Alfred was walking towards me.

"Alfred, I…"

"Can I have a word with you?"

"About?"

"Kiku."

Ivan, who had been trudging to the door, gave Alfred a strange look. Alfred waved him away with a signal, and he nodded, before ghosting out of the conference room behind a bickering Francis and Arthur.

I raised my eyebrows at him. He ignored me, and returning to the table, beckoned me to follow him.

"So, what about Kiku?" I took a seat and he plopped into the one beside me with a grunt.

"You gave me my keys back."

"I did. Now about Kiku?"

"The key to cabin four-one-three wasn't there", he stared at me in a manner which bordered accusing. Before I could stop myself, my pupils dilated.

"I know you have them Yao."

"You can't stop me from seeing Kiku!"

"I know that. That's why I ain't gonna be takin' it from you."

Before that, I was more than prepared to launch into a full sermon as to why I had every right to see Kiku again. But what I certainly wasn't prepared for was his consent. If Alfred was cool about me keeping the key for myself, then why even bother calling me here in the first place? Why not just let me run off with the Godforsaken key and turn a blind eye to the fact that I'd smuggled it away? Unless it meant something to his "hero" persona, Alfred was always dawdling around. Stalling the clock was his favourite pastime, as far as I was concerned.

But surely he had better things to do, considering the fact that we were sailing into Tokyo Harbour in order to ratify Kiku's capitulation? **[19]**

Unless.

"There's a price to pay, isn't there?" The realization dawned on me.

Alfred nodded.

"Will this affect my relationship with Kiku?"

"In public", he drummed his fingers on the desktop. I gave him a blank look, to show him that I wasn't catching on. "In private you and Kiku should be fine. But the price applies when the two of you are in the open."

"That's queer."

"But it's for your own good", he interjected. "It's for Kiku's own good as well."

"I won't be able to determine that for myself unless you tell me what it is that you want me to do in the first place."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there", he leaned into his chair and pressed his finger to his lips, as if brooding over the best way to serve this bargain he had in mind for us both. After a few minutes of silence, he perked up in his chair, and said: "this is what I want you to do.

"From now on, you are to identify Kiku as your "little brother" in public. No longer your wife or your husband or whatever you call him, but your little brother. Your 'Dee-dee'", he said in broken mandarin, "and he will identify you as his elder."

Paint the stars red and call me raving mad! So this is what this afternoon had been all about? But what I still didn't understand was…

"Why in the world?" I lobbed the question at him.

"Like I said before; it's for the best", he said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Look, Yao. Ever since the Nanjing Massacre", I scrunched up my forehead in disdain. Now the Occidentals even have a pet name to call the worst period of my life? "things weren't the same as they were between you and Kiku's folks. Your folks resent his. His folks refuse to lay their armour down and just bounces the hate back. It's a cold war, and if word starts catching fire that the two of you are married, it'll just be an extra load to the circumstances."

"How so?" I really didn't understand.

"Things will just be messier than they already are", he shrugged. "Remember what humans think the fundamental rule of the nation is?"

"Whatever happens to the nation happens to the people." It wasn't completely true, take a three-thousand-year-old nation's word for it. On the outer shell it did hold some significance though. Whatever happens to the nation happens to the people, and whatever happens to the people on a large scale happens to the nation. If the people are poor, their nation catches a cold. If everyone in the country catches a pandemic, the nation himself receives the same fate. If the nation receives a scar down his back, a city is under the worst siege of his life.

But beyond the tangible, it's a different world between the nations and his people. You can't judge a nation if one of his children has a bad case of imaginary Tourette's, and you can't judge his people if a nation likes to dance in the sand. I've lived to see nations whose people are decent and friendly on the exterior chase his neighbours around brandishing machine guns. Nations who can still find it in them to smile when their people are crying. Nations who throw tantrums that never start a wildfire in their bush-lands. And then there are nations whose people brawl each other to death, but they themselves still kiss passionately in their own little world. Nations like Kiku and I.

I told Alfred this, and he boomed: "heck, do I know! Arthur and I squabble on a daily basis, and look where we are now! Uncle Sam and Britannia cavorting through a field o' flowers, yippee-kay-yay!" I quirked an eyebrow at him. He looked to me sheepishly, then scrambled back into his chair. "But the humans don't know that. Listen to me, Yao. At times like these, most of these humans don't even bother thinking outside of the box. They look at a nation, look at their personification, and BAM! That's the end of the story!

"So imagine what they'll think up if they know Kiku's your spouse?"

I didn't want to, so I allowed Alfred to continue his prattling.

"They'll be thinking like: hey, our leaders are betrayin' us and shit by shifting allegiance with the Japs!"  
>"DON'T YOU CALL MY KIKU THAT!"<p>

"Japanese!" Alfred corrected himself. "And then your leaders will be like: golly, there's gotta be a couple a' pro-Sino-Japanese peace parties a' knockin' somewhere in Shanghai. Let's bar the city until we can find 'em, or just burn up the whole darn place altogether!

"Ya get it, Yao? If word of your marriage goes viral, it'll spell disaster for everything we've fought for! It'll throw the world back into the chaos of war when it's not even done recuperatin' from this one!" And for the first time in all the years I've been stuck with him, Alfred actually sounded like he was begging on my feet as he said: "just do us all a favour and keep this between you and Kiku, alright? At least until your folks have gotten themselves time to cool off, and circumstances can go in the clear."

"And when will that be?"

He paused, as if he didn't know the answer to that himself. "We'll see about that. It's too soon to tell", he settled on that answer. "Besides, it won't be all that hard on you or anything, right? I mean, it's not like we're asking for you and Kiku to get divorced. Just to keep your lips sealed until we can see this through. How many people know of this already, Yao?"

"Just a couple of acquaintances we had in a village downtown." _And I don't even know if these people are alive as their names waft around my head, now dissonance from a past I can't go back to without having to limp through the harshness of the wars_.

"They should be able to keep their mouths shut", he said it as if words could miraculously come true just by uttering them.

"And our children?"

"I'll leave that for you to tell them. After all, they're gonna have to stop calling you two their daddies in public, just for the simplicity of things."

I swallowed my spit. I haven't seen Yong Soo since Alfred had liberated him, leaving my adoptive son to trail off on his own path to independence. Long was still in Arthur's custodies, and as for Ling… How will my sweet little girl handle it? It'll scar her little world of fairytales forever, to know that we can never be a proper family ever again in public. The taste of bile settled uncomfortably in my throat just thinking about it.

"And what about the other countries? They know what Kiku and I share."

"Leave that to the hero!" He shot me a thumbs-up. "I'm gonna schedule a meeting between Arthur and Francis this evening to discuss it. Ivan already knew."

"Oh, I… Wait a second. Alfred, can you repeat that last line?"

"Ivan already knew. As a matter of fact, he was the one who proposed this to me in the first place…" Alfred's grin died into a look of pure horror, like a mole who had just leaked out valuable information about his master. "No! I mean, the rest of the allies and I had came to the verdict last afternoon while you were..."

"You just said Arthur and Francis knew nothing of this!" I rose from my seat defiantly. "And I was with you all afternoon yesterday, remember? Meeting?"

He hung his head, refusing to meet my glare.

"Now quit lying to me and tell me what you're playing at, you lying rascal!" I was so frustrated I couldn't even think straight anymore. My line of vision was gradually darkening. My breathing became labored and harsh, so that my throat felt like I hadn't drank water in forever, though it wasn't like I had any time to think of it either. Now that Ivan had been exposed at the scene, the tables were turning. I knew something had came up when he stopped mollycoddling me so much this morning, and adding one to this whole "little brother" business, I realized it had never been about keeping the peace after all. Never about it being for me nor Kiku's interests.

When Alfred said nothing, I began to storm for the door. "Fine! Don't tell me anything. I'll go confront Ivan myself…"

"Yao, it's not what you think it is!" He staggered to his feet and snatched my wrist before I could reach the doorknob. "Look, I confess to it, alright! It was a con! It was all a con to get you and Kiku to gradually split away!"

"Confessing won't do mutiny like this any good, will it?" I glowered at him over my shoulders. Alfred had plummet from a rough-tough jock to this beggar pleading on his knees before me that for a moment, I actually felt sorry for him.

But only for a moment, and nothing exceeding that.

"It was an offer I couldn't decline", he rambled on. "Ivan needed a vendor, while I needed an ally in the east."

"Is that ALL you two needed?"

"No, no it wasn't", he trembled. "Look, I-I'll call it off, I promise! I won't annex him anymore."

"You'd better not", I wrenched out of his grasp.

He sighed, then blinked heavily to the ceiling. "This calls for the establishment of some new committee or something"** [20]**, his voice cracked and splintered.

And where once resentment and revulsion occupied my heart, it all went down the drain to be replaced by empathy as I remembered that I wasn't the only one to have lost someone in the war; lost everything I'd held close and tight to my heart, and everything else which I'd raised on pedestals around me.

Even before the first European war, Alfred's name had already begun to rise to prominence. Word of the ascending prowess of the New World devoured the length of the map faster than a wildfire in the autumn season, and eventually, even the real powers came; barged into the trading line, with its ostentatious democracy and black ships. This second victory only splayed his name into more light, so that Alfred was now renown without exception. Wanted. Loved by every one of the people who make up his entity.

But I still had something that he didn't.

Alfred cocked his neck at me in bewilderment as I laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Look Alfred", I inhaled deeply, reminding myself that this was the best thing to do, and that it wasn't so much of a sacrifice, but more of a "compromise". "I'll keep the marriage a secret. I'll do it, just so long as you're willing to keep your end of the deal."

I smiled at him as warm as I could. Alfred scanned me with wide, glistening eyes… And then his expression darkened, and he pushed me away.

"I don't need your sympathy!" He growled.

"What? What's this got to do with any sympathy!" I forced the insult that raked my rice paper-thin patience down my throat. Alfred really couldn't sense the atmosphere even if it bopped him on the nose. "I'm just doing this because your reasoning before made sense to me. We're doing this for the sake of my family, remember?'

Alfred gawked at me. I was secretly feeling smug that I'd managed to send him scurrying into a corner, but I knew better than to not bother trying to conceal it at all. I must have done a job worse than I thought I would, because he immediately took to rebuilding his walls again. "Like, obviously!" He blurted. "And I knew that all along by the way! I was just…" I mentally slapped my forehead. "I-I just, um, the words left my throat in a hurry! What did you hear? Did you hear 'sympathy'? Well, I meant I didn't need your, um, sin paddy! Yeah! Your fucking sinful paddy, Yao. Giving folks food poisoning and…"

"Feeding my population of over one million?"

"Yeah, you're getting too big!" I snickered. "And, um… Burgers and fries, to hell with it already!

"Well! Since that's resolved", the pats he gave me on the back before he swerved around to leave was more like a pounding. "I'll just be on my way then…"

"Alfred."

He stood stock-still, not turning around to regard me as he choked out:

"Yeah?"

"Hold up a second", I marched to him and spun him around to face me. He gave me a puzzled frown. "I want to know", I sighed, "that if your preliminary goal was to get Kiku and I to draw apart from the beginning, then why did you let us see each other today in the first place? Wouldn't the job have been easier if you just banned us from seeing one another altogether?"

He faded into his own thoughts then, squinting behind the rims of his spectacles. However, by the time he'd re-emerged into the real world he was beaming from ear to ear. It wasn't the happiest smile I have ever seen, and yet it wasn't one which harboured resentment or sorrow, but was a smile which was refreshingly in-between; a wistful sort of expression, like that of an Occidental father who had lived to see his child grow and walk down the aisle of a chapel.

"Simple enough: because it was the right thing to do."

I waited for him to say more, and after a few moments of resonating silence, he did. "It started a couple a' days ago", he began, "a week or so if I can remember. That day, our first day out to sea, after the doctors I'd called up to check on Kiku had left, I lingered back for a bit to see how he's been. The checkup had been a long one, with the boys wanting to make sure that Kiku was really recuperate'in smooth, so he was asleep by the time it was all over. But it wasn't only that."

"What else is there to it?"

"He was talking in his sleep. Rambling all sorts o' things. Not what I'd define clarity with, per se, but lucid enough to hear your name being mentioned", he cleared his throat, "again and again and again.

"And you should 'a seen him Yao, when he said your name like that. Kiku was smiling so sweet. The first time I've seen him so happy since all hell broke loose six years ago for us all", I nodded, unable to resist the pride which fluttered my heart. "But when he woke up and looked around the room, that smile is as good as gone. Of course, I was there to greet him, but do you know what he asked instead? He said: Alfred, you're not Yao. Where's Yao? And then I'd tell him he's going nuts, just to wrangle a few laughs out of him", his expression darkened. "But he'd always bury himself under that blanket and cry whenever I did. He's done the same thing every single day; asked me the same thing every single time until you came to see him today.

"He told me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Except for the part when he cried for me."

We shared a round of laughter, as if Alfred and I were old friends who had not crossed paths for over an eternity. "Now that's the Kiku we know.

"You go ahead and count yourself lucky, Yao", he smiled wistfully. "To be on opposing sides for over a decade, to have nearly destroyed you in his own war-induced madness, and still want to see you so badly; want to disfigure himself, just to show you he's willing to stab that old sword into his guts for every time he'd hurt you before… That takes somethin' mighty real, ya know?" He pounded his left breast, to show me what he meant. "And I gotta hand it to you loud and clear: Kiku wants you, Yao. Not me, but you. And since he wants you that badly, it'd be a downright sin for me to stand in his way and yours. Even if I can't have him anymore, Kiku's still my friend. I love him", and when he saw me blanch, quickly added: "not in the way you think. Well, at least I'm trying to taper it down some from now on. And I want him to be happy, even if it means I have to lose a battle for once."

I nodded slowly, letting his words sink into me and fill me with a warmth that I didn't expect. Then I cleared my throat, and said:

"You know what Alfred? Maybe you're not as obnoxious as I thought", I beamed.

As expected, Alfred's reaction was not that of pride, but of utmost horror. "You thought I was WHAT!" He squeaked.

"Preceding our little talk, I used to think of you as a bossy and obnoxious little Occidental brat."

"You take that back, Wang Yao!"

"But it's the truth!"

"So that's all I get for my nuggets of wisdom", he huffed.

"No, that's why you have to listen to me until I'm finished talking", I countered. He relented, then waved his hand for me to continue. "Back when the Occident had first set up vendor in Asia, I used to loathe the whole lot of you to the ninth layer of heaven and back. But having to work with you and the boys for so long, I realized how much you guys are just a bunch of oafs."

"I'm takin' that as a compliment."

"Take it as you may. But ever since then, I couldn't help but wonder if there's a side to you Occidental oafs I haven't see the whole time I've been busy hating you all. And then I wonder if you Occidentals aren't all bad with no boon", I shrugged. "And it's proven now. Occidentals are still backwards and queer, but they're definitely not bad. There's evidence, and you're one of them", I raised my brows at him.

Surprising to say, Alfred turned a little red. "Aw, shucks Yao", he swooned.

And just as equally surprising, he went on to holler: "but of course! For I am THE HERO!"

"Dare you say that again and I'm taking it all back."

"I'm just ruffling your feathers, ya old coot!

"But no kidding; it's good that you're going to start warming up to us after all", he gave me an approving nod. "Because if there's one thing I'm gonna tell you now, it's this: you go on and get used to us being this way around you. We're all pummeling into a new world now, Yao, and although the world wars are over and colonialism will soon be abolished under the hands of the he- I mean, Beatific Justice, there's no doubt we've still got a long way to go before _all _wars are gone for good. But trust me when I say that there will come the day when we'll all be able to hold hands again; Occident and Orient alike, as united states, instead of adversaries behind picket fences. I can picture it now: justice and righteousness in everything that's anything, from trade to love.

"But until that day, expect each and every one of us to at least try and get along", he winked. "And being a country with so much potential such as yourself, Yao, expect us to drag you into it whether you like it or not."

"I think…" I reciprocated the smile. "I think I might like that."

"Ha-ha; you'd better!

"Now, the boys and I are gonna go booze it up at the top deck. You wanna tag along?"

"I don't know, Alfred. I'm planning on seeing Kiku soon…"

"Ah, give it a rest!" He slung an arm over my shoulders and steered me out of the room. "Give Kiku a rest! We have a few days left before she hits Tokyo Bay, so you have plenty of time to catch up with Kiku then."

I was about to protest loudly against Alfred's carefree judgment. Nevertheless, after flipping it over in my head, I decided against declining and allowed Alfred to lead us to the staircase that wound to the decks. Already, a pleasant euphoria was settling where everything had once been so tense and dark within me.

And who knows? Perhaps today might see the day I will actually booze myself senseless.


	4. 4 - Kiku's Punishment

**Let's just get this thing done with real fast, shall we?**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

**Kiku's Punishment**

**•••**

"_Kiku? Kiku, I'm back._"

I didn't dare breathe, as if that alone would be enough to steal him away from me again. Instead, I clenched my good eye shut and pretended to still be asleep. It wasn't difficult; my left eye was numb to me, and I don't know just when I might get it back.

But cruel fate wouldn't have it in me to lie to the man I had flourished for more than a thousand years with. I twitched, then unwittingly released every puff of breath I'd stashed in a low moan as his fingertips raked the length of my mandible. My eyelids flew open, independent from my command.

And there he was.

The bright features I would recognize mountains and valleys away, framed by tendrils of ash-brown which must have escaped the clutch of his ponytail. He leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to my lips. "Tell me you're glad to see me", he commanded with a cheeky grin.

I pushed him away, giggling in spite of myself.

"Magistrate", I chided, "will I be punished if I do not follow orders?"

"I will see to it that you be punished severely and at a leisurely pace", he rapped my forehead with a laugh. "You silly little thing.

"Oh, I almost forgot! Look what I spent all morning making for you", He twisted around to grab something from the stool. It was a parcel wrapped in a stretch of checkered napkin, and whatever was inside smelled heavenly, not to mention mouth-watering.  
>"What is it?" I inhaled the invigorating scent of spices and boiled meat deeply into my lungs.<p>

"Wait and see", he deported himself with an air of mystery. I rolled to my side, staring in transfixed anticipation as he undid the napkin's knot and unfurled it, revealing a metallic lunchbox. This he casted the lid away, to reveal…

"Oh!" I gushed. Yao's homemade fish stew. He knew it had always been a favourite of mine. "You shouldn't have, Yao. And you spent all morning making this for me?"

"All morning. Perhaps a little bit more", he beamed.

Maybe it was because of the curling wisps of steam which wafted from the concoction, but I felt my face flush a deep red. Yao saw this and pinched my cheeks, scolding me softly in that way I loved for making a mountain out of the "anthills" of things he always did for me. I immediately took to calling him a hypocrite. If I made a mountain out of the "anthills" he would dish out to me at rapid fire and without shame, then he made a thousand kingdoms out of mine. A smile graced my lips, remembering how he'd called me a million and one synonyms of adorable whenever I did so much as asked him how work was that day

Murmuring for me to lift my head for a bit, Yao propped the pillow against the wall behind me, and then proceeded to help me sit up. The fact that he was being extra wary not to disturb my midsection didn't surpass my notice, and I was extremely grateful for this. Those ugly scars were the only reason I was confined to bed, as Alfred had warned me that even so much as an uncalculated jerk of my hips could open the sutures. Finally, after he had taken one precaution too many to ensure that I was comfortable, he said:

"Now I will feed you, alright?"

I paled. "Maybe some other time—AH! Y-Yao!" I turned away as a spoonful of stock nudged my bottom lip.

He frowned at me. "But you always let me feed you whenever you were sick."

"That was back when we were teenations, Yao. Now you're almost four thousand, and I'm nearing my two thousands. It's about time we start behaving a little bit more maturely, don't you think?" I smiled, gently coaxing the spoon and lunchbox out of his hands and laying them on my lap. Even through the quilt the stew was warm and inviting.

He shrugged. "Bright side; at least I know you're well enough to eat on your own again", he smiled. "How are you feeling today?"

"Better, thank you. The light doesn't bother me anymore", I sipped the stock, humming my delight as the rich soup trickled down my throat. "And how are you?"

"Better than I've been in ages!" He cheered.

"And… Um", I averted my stare repentantly to the stew. The stock now tasted like cardboard shoving down my esophagus. "How is the scar?"

"Which one?" Before a shadow of knowing crossed his face, blotting his ebullience and causing the light to dissipate from his eyes. "Oh. That scar."

"It was a deep one."

"No it wasn't", he squeezed my shoulders, "and it doesn't hurt anymore."

"Really?"

"Really. Can't even remember it's there most of the time. It's nothing but a mark now, Kiku."

_It's nothing but a mark now, Kiku_. That's right Yao. It's nothing but a mark. A mark which would surely fester him with the blood and gore of our tattered past every time it flashed at him from a mirror, as a vile symbol of the most barbaric act of sin any country could have ever committed upon him; much lest a country who should have loved him more than any other country in the world.

Yet Yao was still kind enough to address it as "nothing but a mark" in front of my sorry face. Knowing him, he would probably run around blabbering that to everyone who asked him how he felt about that ugly scar running down his back: "I don't even care about it anymore. It's nothing but a mark now."

But I wonder what he truly thought of it at nights casted by the heavens for two, splayed in our bed, with only his thoughts where another should have been resting in his arms.

Deep inside, I wanted Yao to truly love me once more. But at the same time, I wanted him to hate me. I wanted him to punish me for everything I did to him in that war; hit me or kill me, I didn't care. Half-death had made me shriek with a pain no words can describe, and I might have been rendered unconscious for the rest of the second world war if Ling had not found me, screamed and sobbed for me to stop and dragged me to the infirmary with just one second to spare before it was too late. But even that pain did little to make it alright. That sword had spliced my innards under the command of my hands, not Yao's.

I wanted Yao to punish me.

But he was so sweet to me, even after all I had put him through in the worst century of my immortal life, that it made me wonder how I could possibly convince him to do it.

"Now, you stop thinking about it and finish the rest of your stew", he pecked me on the tip of my nose. "Freshly-cooked love doesn't taste as good as when it's still piping hot."

I forced a small smile to him, as much as it made my heart ache, and turned back to the stew. That was when I realized something.

"Yao. You said you spent all morning making fish stew for me."

"I did."

"So that was all you did this morning, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"So the whole morning you were busy whipping up stew for me, you haven't eaten breakfast haven't you?" I frowned.

"Yes!" He declared-then his face fell as he looked to me, and he immediately blurted: "I-I mean, no!"

"Yes, Yao", I sighed. "You haven't eaten breakfast yet."

"I've eaten breakfast too!"

"But not this morning, you haven't.

"And don't you try and lie to me and say you've already eaten lunch either." He pouted at me. I returned it wholeheartedly; it was one thing to keep me tacked to his forehead all day and night and make fish stew for me, but it was another thing to toss away his well-being for the sake of mine. That was just it about my husband: under normal circumstances, he had as much common sense as the next person, and he was righteous and true to his guns. But when the situation called for him to, he was also a hundred and one percent passion. I would have encouraged this trait for every day of his life, if only his sort of passion made room for reasoning.

I offered the lunchbox and spoon to him. "Have some", I ordered.

"But it's for you, Kiku!"

"But you've missed out on a meal, and I'm not letting you skip another one. And besides, I'm insisting on it, so it would be rude of you to decline the offer", I emphasized on the lunchbox and spoon. "Now have some. I'm not letting you starve until dinner."

He scowled. Then, just as his fingers hovered above the outstretched spoon, his lips twisted into a sinister grin. Yao parted his lips before me. I squinted at him, before the realization of what he wanted me to do dawned over me, and the heat took to searing my face again.

"You can't be serious", I groaned.

He nodded.

"That's immature, Yao."

He said nothing, but pointed to his gaping mouth.

I glared at him disapprovingly. Nevertheless, I found myself giving in shortly after, scooping a good amount of stock and feeding it into his mouth. He slurped it with a roguish smile.

"Compromise", he smirked.

"An immature three-thousand-year-old", I rolled my eyes, but found myself smiling lopsidedly all the same.

And yet still it felt wrong, enjoying these moments of tenderness with Yao. For they were moments of tenderness I obviously didn't deserve.

* * *

><p>I haven't been happier in a century than I'd been that afternoon I spent in the company of the one person who meant the most; more than anything else in the world. We had finished the stew at our own pace. Now the empty container and spoon sat on top of the otherwise useless dresser, swaddled in its napkin once more.<p>

"What time is it Yao?" Under Yao's persistence, I had been made to lay back down on the cot.

His fingers froze in the middle of fondling my locks. He hitched up the sleeve of his white dress shirt and glanced at the watch on his wrist.

"Five."

"Goodness! Five already?"

"Time flies by when you're spending it on something you like", he beamed.

"So how long have you been here?"

"Four hours."

My eyes widened. "Wouldn't Alfred and the others be looking for you now?"

He shook his head. "Alfred's giving me the freedom to visit you as frequently and as long as I like, so long as I give you plenty of time to rest and I don't drag you out of your cabin", he brandished a key proudly in his fist.

"Ah. Good on him then", I couldn't shake off the feeling of awe which overwhelmed me; couldn't help but wonder just how Yao had managed to coax Alfred into granting him such a request, when it had been obvious to me from the events taking place a few days ago that Alfred wasn't too keen on letting anyone but himself see me. I made a mental note to myself that once I was out of bed, I'd need to express my gratitude to him somehow.

"But…" I jolted out of my thoughts at the darkness in Yao's voice. "It did come with a price."

Ah! I should've known nothing good could ever come out of begging Alfred for such a difficult petition!

Nothing in this world came without a price. To still go moon-gazing in the winter meant to lug a thick overcoat with you. To love someone meant to care for, dedicate your passion to and stay true to your significant other until either one of you dissipated into timelessness. To wage a war was to see your men slaughtered, your people in peril and your chances tested on the battlefields, and to be immortal meant to limp on, no matter what happened in life; no matter how much you wanted to end it, and no matter how gruesome it became. With this in mind, the only difference between anything was how bitter the price was. Being a nation who had his whole life stretched ahead of him into forever and beyond, I've learned a long time ago that to get by anywhere on Earth, you had to be able to at least assess these prices by heart, to know which kinks in the road you should go down to avoid the more expensive toll.

But staring at Yao's unreadable, hard expression now, I found myself torn between wanting to dismiss it as trivia, or telling him to call back the request, for the heavy price he'll have to answer to.

Finally, after taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I worked up the courage to ask him what it was.

"Yao? What was the condition?" I laid a hand on his forearm and gently shook it.

He turned away from me. "Do you really want to know?"

"Is it…" I paused to gather my thoughts together. "Is it really that bad?"

"Not exactly, but it might be rather odd."

"What does he want you to do?"

"It's about us, actually." He spun to face me. Everything was concealed behind a plain smile so that I couldn't read what was going to happen next; it scared me more than I'd like to admit. "It's about our relationship, Kiku."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, futilely trying to get it to go down.

"He wants us to keep our marriage a secret to the public."

"_EH?!_" It felt like my whole world did a backflip. I didn't know what to think about anything anymore. What had I expected when Yao warned me that it would be about our relationship? Did I think Alfred would force us to end it? Put to the coffin everything Yao and I had shared for years on end, when he just wanted to keep our marriage sealed from the populace?

"You mean he hasn't told you yet?"

I shook my head.

"But you're not upset, are you?"

I eyeballed him, unable to muster anything that would express my confusion in ten characters or less. However, as circumstances found a way to settle soundly at the bottom of my stomach, the truth dawned over me.

"No", I breathed. "… Surprisingly, no. But why would he ask for something as trivial as that?"

Yao then proceeded to recount to me the details of a conversation he and Alfred had sometime after Alfred had chased him out of the cabin. All the while I listened, taking in the details with silent repentance. Some of it had stung me, like the fact that Yao's people still held such a cold grudge against mine; against _me_. While others irked me to no end, like when I learned that my people were so full of their post-war pride that no one with a voice had the decency to apologize, and simply passed the baton of hate as it was flung to them.

But having dismissed hurt and frustration, the circumstances surprisingly made sense.

Though I had a nagging feeling in my guts that Yao was hiding something from me. Perhaps it was a secret intention he'd dug out of Alfred (and Ivan, I learned shortly after) that he didn't want me to know, but nevertheless, it perturbed me that there might be a side to this story I wasn't hearing to be able to make all the right decisions.

"And that's pretty much all he told me", he lied as he finished recounting the story.

I didn't want to nag him, so I simply nodded my head.

"Does it make sense to you Kiku?"

"Yes", I assured him. "It'll be simple, if that's all Alfred wants from us."

"Oh, no it won't. We still have to tell the kids", he said dolefully.

I perked up at his words. Immediately, a picture of Yong Soo, Yi Ling and our little Jia Long loomed before my mind's eye; three little nations once more, frolicking in blessed sunshine and the fauna which thrived in their mountainside daycare. Then I tried to picture them as they were now-three Fareast Asian teenations… And the picture crumbled. Yong Soo had his back to me, refusing to see me eye to eye, even in my dreams. Yi Ling was crying for me, her skirt tattered and covered in my blood; her once-rosy cheeks pale after I had to hide her from her beloved sun, for fearing of what would happen to her if I let her run loose from the premises of my home. And Jia Long had ghosted away from the picture altogether.

Yong Soo. Yi Ling. Jia Long. Will mother ever see you all smiling again?

Worse still, will they bear me being there with them once they've reunited once more?

"Do we have to?"

"If we don't, they might accidentally spill it to someone."

"It'll kill them inside."

"We'll tell them it's only for the time being", he caressed the length of my forearm. I took his hand in mine, and we sat there in silence, exchanging words through a language unheard. Finally he said: "I'm not too worried about the boys, though. Yong Soo is older now, so surely he'll be able to understand our circumstances once we give it to him inside-out. And Jia Long has always been mature for his age. We can only hope that he still possesses this trait. I can arrange for Arthur to tell him, since we can't see him yet.

"Kiku, would you be comfortable if you spoke to Yong Soo about this?"

"It's not about if I'm comfortable speaking to him, Yao. It's about if Yong Soo is comfortable speaking to me", I murmured.

Yao's pupils dilated as he swiveled to me.

"What makes you say that, Kiku?"

I didn't answer him. I felt like I would be betraying my adoptive son if I spoke about how distant and cold he had been to me since my soldiers raided Nanjing. Knowing Yao, he would probably confront Yong Soo about it if I told him. I didn't want that. This was between Yong Soo and me, not Yao. I'll just have to find a way to patch this up with my son, without interference from the outside. I'd scarred him in a place just as deep than his father's, so it was my responsibility to put things right.

"Kiku?" He nudged me softly. "Kiku, what's bothering you?"

"Nothing", I fibbed. "I just think it'll do well to give Yong Soo some time to cool off before we can go back to speaking terms. That's all."

"He's not mad at you, is he?" Yao's expression darkened.

"No! Good heavens, no Yao!"

"So… This is just to do with giving him space after the war?" He didn't sound convinced in the least.

But I decided to play along anyway and nodded. His brow arched, but he did not push me for an answer.

"If you put it that way, I suppose it makes sense…"

_Rat-tat-tat_.

We blenched in unison. I craned my neck to give Yao and inquiring gaze. Alfred usually never visited at this time of the day, and apart from him, Yao was the only other visitor I was expecting , and he knew of this just as well as I did-I know he did, for the apprehensiveness in his eyes were visible. But he pressed a finger to his lips and mouthed to me: "don't fret Kiku. I'll go check it out."

I gave him my affirmative, then released his hand nervously from my grasp. Being confined to the cot, the only reassurance I had was the soft pad Yao's loafers made against the carpet, to tell me that Yao was making his way calmly across the room to the doorknob.

He didn't have to get very far.

For the next moment the "_rat-tat-tat_" had crescendoed into a "BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!" Then, a not-at-all-soothing "CRASH!" assaulted my ears. I couldn't take it any more. I wanted to know what was happening, and who had broken into my cabin. I lurched forward to sit up.

_Too fast_.

Before I could even administer what was happening, a sharp twinge pierced my midsection, as if someone had stabbed me in my guts with the hilt of a poisoned blade. I cried with a pain so harrowing that I collapsed atop the mattress, writhing and whimpering. My hands clutched my stomach, but a few seconds later felt sickly damp.

"KIKU!" Yao howled. A moment to come and he was looming above me. I saw him blanch as his pupils scanned my midsection. "Kiku? You're bleeding."

"Get help, Yao; it hurts", I gritted my teeth, stifling a wince. It really, really did. "G-get Alfred…"

"I can help him, Yao!", an eerily familiar voice begged.

I froze with the pain still clawing my innards, my breath coming in gasps and whimpers. Yao was on his knees, fumbling with my bandages and getting himself smeared in crimson, when the bedraggled end of a scarf passed over my eyes. A head of platinum locks appeared over Yao, lilac pupils regarding me with peril and pity. But it was only for a brief second, before Yao pushed him away.

"I-I can help!" The voice insisted again.

"We'll manage on our own!" Yao shot back.

Shot back as a beige-coloured sleeve elbowed him out of the way. Yao tumbled to his knees with a cry of surprise, as Ivan's blank face darted into my line of vision once more. His scarf had been unwounded, now clutched in his hands.

And that's when it hit me: his neck, where I'd scarred him with the tip of my _katana _the day his forces attempted to siege Yao, was pale and smooth. Unblemished, as if it had never bore the brunt of the second world war. It surpassed me how he could have recovered so fast from his battle scars, while the rest of the nations were still limping around theirs.

"Yao…" I was stifled as Ivan pressed a finger to my lips.

"It won't work if you don't calm down, Honda", he murmured.

"What are you going to do to him?" Yao's tone was incapacitated. Begging, even, and it perturbed me that Yao may have given in to Ivan after all. Now all that's left to do was surrender to fate, and hope that Ivan hadn't came here with a mind bearing grudges too.

"I'm not going to hurt him", was all he promised. "Be a dear and lift his waist up for me, Yao."

And Yao did just that. "I'll keep here to make sure that he doesn't", Yao whispered to me in Japanese as he lifted me gently by the hips. I nodded discretely, more than happy to have reassurance in the face of an old enemy who may or may not have forgiven me for my atrocities yet.

"Keep still, Honda." Ivan bent over me to wind the scarf tightly around my midsection. When he was done, he stepped back to survey his work in silence, his eyes never leaving me.

For some time, nothing happened. Ivan just watched and waited. I held my breath, not knowing what I was supposed to anticipate. A good minute went by, and Yao looked just about to pummel at Ivan and demand an explanation.

But that was when I felt the pain slowly ghost away, like murky bathwater down a drainage system. The process was slow and gradual, but there was no mistaking it: for reasons I couldn't understand, Ivan's scarf was a remedial sponge, soaking up my pain until I could no longer feel anything.

"Ivan…"

"What is it, Kiku?" It was Yao who responded. "Does something hurt? Did the scarf do something bad to you?"

I shook my head incredulously.

"It's... I-it's all gone."

Yao squinted in confusion. He craned his neck to Ivan, his glare demanding an explanation.

But Ivan simply smiled and bent down to retrieve his scarf. I was hypnotized as layer by layer, the scarf was unwounded from me. By the time the last layer of mangled cloth was peeled from me, the skin on my midriff was as smooth and untainted as it had been before the war. No pockmarks. No blood. No long, hideous gashes. The physical symbol of my repentance for the war was gone, and my enemy had been the one to heal me of it.

I didn't know which one made me feel guiltier.

"Kiku." Yao brushed the length of my midsection with his knuckles. Then he replaced the quilt over me and smoothened my hair, giving me an elated smile. "You're healed.

"Thank you, Ivan. I don't know what else to say", he looked up.

"You can start by saying we're best friends again?" He grinned sweetly.

Yao chuckled. "We've always been", he reciprocated the gesture.

"Now can you leave?"

Two pairs of eyes were on me in an instant. Yao's startled, flabbergasted pair. And then there was Ivan's, lurking with something like hurt; glazed under something like feigned indifference. The latter wounded the scarf around his neck and started for the door, ghosting out of the cabin without a single word.

When the door closed with a silent click, Yao swiveled back to me.

"Kiku…"

"You too Yao. Please, leave me be."

"B-but…"

"I'm feeling tired. I think I need to rest now."

Yao opened his mouth to say something else. Or perhaps he was waiting for me to say what he wanted to say. Perhaps he was waiting to hear "no, I don't want you to go after all. Please say for a bit more", or "I feel horrible, Yao. Please hold my hand."

But I said neither, so he closed his mouth silently. Murmuring something or another, he pressed a sloppy kiss to my lips and trudged uneasily for the door.

"You're not upset with Ivan, are you Kiku?" His voice met me from the doorway.

"I'll need to think about it", I said without looking at him.

"And... You're alright with me visiting you again, aren't you?"

I hesitated, mentally flipping his question this way and that in my head.

"I'll need to think about that too."

The lights were flicked off, and as the soft thud of the door closing pierced the gloom, I was alone in the dark once more.

* * *

><p><em>Honda? Psst-Honda!<em>

I flopped onto my stomach and snuggled into the pillow, groaning my complaints. "Not now, Yao", I drawled.

"Honda? Honda, please wake up."

My eyelids flew open, and not because of the request. It was because I realized for the first time that the voice which was speaking to me wasn't Yao's, but instead, sounded oddly familiar to…

The mangled end of a scarf passed over my eyes.

I lurched forward with a cry, but was quickly silenced as Ivan clamped a mitted hand over my mouth. He withdrew it nervously as his eyes met my glare, and shot me an apologetic look.

"Kiku, I'm sorry. I know it's in the middle of the night, but I really need to talk to you about something…"

"Get to the point", I ordered coldly.

He gulped, then obeyed with no complaints. "It's about you and Yao", he said in an almost-whisper. "Now, I don't want to go into too many details, but Alfred and I…"

"I already know", I interjected. "Yao told me everything this afternoon."

If it were possible, Ivan's frostbitten complexion became all the more paler at my words. His gaze fell to sweep the floor, and he murmured: "he did?"

I nodded, crossing my arms firmly over my figure; either because I was all that furious at him, or because the chilly atmosphere which enveloped us at that moment was stifling me, I couldn't be sure anymore.

A moment passed between the two of us in dead silence, and I had a good mind to settle back into bed regardless of whether he was planning to loiter here for the rest of the night or not, when Ivan spoke for a sixth time that night.

"Is that why you hate me so much now?"

His words shot a peculiar feeling into my body, as if words alone could be so harrowing. I dared myself to glance at him from beneath the safety of my fringe, and saw that Ivan's eyes were welling with tears. He tried to snub them discreetly, but I could already see the translucent path the first one had traced down his cheeks. I tried to swallow the feeling down—this peculiar feeling that was lumping in my throat and making me feel like the biggest jerk in the world; but no matter what I did, it clung there. Stubbornly. As stubborn as my kneejerk pride.

Ivan didn't do anything wrong. He was just a bystander to my internal struggles; just there. Big, happy, cherubic-faced Ivan, in the wrong time and place. It was wrong and selfish of me to be belting it all out on him, just to quell the pangs that battered my conscience.

"Oh, Ivan", I sighed. "I don't hate you. I won't ever hate you."

Ivan sniffled. "You don't?" His voice rose hopefully at the last syllable.

I gave him a feeble smile. "Why would I ever? You did nothing wrong", I told him, meaning every word I said. "You helped me feel better, even when I had scarred you in that war. If anything, I'm in your debt, Ivan, and you should be the one to hate me."

"But I don't, Honda!" He quickly protested. "Even though you're quiet and you act like a dead corpse whenever we're around… You speak so kindly, and you never shout in my ears.

"You're softer than the others", He shot me a lopsided grin. "And you never call me names or boss me around. Not since the war, anyway."

I was about to quietly protest against his appraisals. But before I could get a single word out of my mouth, Ivan had already snuffled me in his big, beige-clothed arms and was squealing something or another into my ears. Now, I have never been a fan of intimacy; it would take longer than any mortal can live for me to be comfortable enough to shrug my personal bubble for anyone, and even when Yao and I had begun seeing each other, it took nearly a decade for him to convince me to hold his hand—and longer still for him to get us into the same bed without him hauling me into it.

In this manner, out of pure impulse, I began bucking and clawing blindly at Ivan, with cries and shrieks aplenty, in a desperate attempt to pry him off of me. At last he recoiled with a piercing yelp as one of my nails slashed into his cheeks. Though surprisingly, he was laughing it off seconds later, in spite of the fact that the fresh wound had begun to seep lightly with blood.

"Ah, Honda. As Honda as ever", he rubbed the tears from the corners of his eyes.

* * *

><p>I don't deserve any of this.<p>

I was a betrayer; a savage; worse still, I was a sinner. And yet the very nations who were supposed to abhor my name were still around to tell me otherwise. Were still giving me the mercy of healing me of my wretched scars, and feeding me love undivided by the mouthfuls. Gifts I didn't deserve for any good reason I could conjure in my head.

I knew that there was still a long way to go before I could be fully forgiven for the iniquities of my past. I saw it in Yao's eyes, the day he came to visit my cabin for the very first time. I had repented my sins to him then, and told him I truly didn't mean for the winter when my troops had swept into his ravished capital, to lay destruction in their wake and stab a fire into the Chinese whom I knew couldn't be cured simply by words. For it was words, lies and deceptions—_my_ words, lies and deceptions—which had conceived it all in the first place. It would be taboo to heal the swallow's broken wings with the knife which had shredded it first. I knew that it had not been the deity of forgiveness whom had prompted Yao to blunder back to me, but his love for me. Love was a blind entity, after all.

But even love I no longer deserved.

"Honda, you're spacing off."

Ringing laughter echoed in my ears, coaxing me back to the reality whom had taken vigil upon the stool. The knitting needles in Ivan's fingers clicked and ticked away, and he smiled at me. No longer was the gash I had given him present, for he had worked the magic of his scarf again upon it.

"Honda is acting so suspiciously quiet", he casted his scarf-in-the-making away and planted his chin upon folded hands. "What are you thinking about, Honda?"

"Ah. Nothing important", I lied behind a smile.

Ivan fell quiet for some time, the lilac of his eyes misting with thought. Then he nodded slowly. "It must be something secret", he mused.

"It's nothing important, Ivan."

"You don't have to tell me if it's a secret", he insisted.

I saw no point in sparking an argument out of this, so I simply hung my head and murmured my gratitude to him.

"Are you alright, Honda?"

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you", I fibbed again. "How about you, Ivan? Are you not feeling tired? It's well past midnight after all, and I believe you will need your sleep."

"Oh, Honda. You're so silly", he waved away with a giggle. "I'm as fine as I'll ever be! There's only four hours to sunrise after all, and I'm far too excited to sleep now."

_I wonder why that would be_, I thought wryly. _For I see nothing particularly attractive to the senses in a bed-ridden Oriental_.

"Do you want to know why I'm so excited that I'm not sleeping, Honda?"

"Eh!" my jaws snapped up to eye him warily. Ivan was as mysterious as he was macabre, but did he actually have the abilities to read my mind now? "What makes you think I would?"

"So you don't?"

"Well… Actually…"

"So you do", He grinned from ear to ear. I returned the gesture; not because I was happy that I would be getting an answer to a question I couldn't care less about, but because it gave me some comfort to know that he had not been nitpicking around the content of my brains as of yet. "See Honda; when I was a little nation, I had grown up alone and friendless. The only nations who would ever come around to play with me were my sisters, and any other nations who came simply wanted me as their servant boy."

"I think I can relate to that", I smiled softly. I, too, had spent my years as a little nation in solitary confinement, severed from the rest of the world by the sea and an indolence to discover what could be pummeling beyond the foamy horizons. It wasn't until I was a teenation and Yao had his junks hurtled into my beaches one fateful night, that I made my first friend. Now Yao was more than that to me, and it pains me more than if I had had no one at all to begin with. _Oh, why did he have to find me in the first place? Why couldn't I have just disappeared before that, torn apart by civil disruption or swallowed by the sea?_

"Really, Honda?"

I nodded. "But no one has ever tried to conquer me when I was a little nation. Back in those days, lands or seas could be claimed by anyone, so long as it'd been known that another nation has not laid their seal on it yet; beyond the boundaries between nations, we kept our hands to ourselves. Conquering foreign lands was an alien term to us until the era of the Golden Horde, and then I was already a teenation. Though there was this system that had to do with tributary states for a while."

"Tributary states, huh?" Ivan blinked at me. "That sounds pleasant. What were tributary states, Honda?"

"It was a system where we all bowed down and recognized power to one leader in the continent, and realized him as an outside ruler to our civilization."

"And everyone willingly abode to it?"

"Yes."

"Even you?" He gave me a funny grin, as if he couldn't believe that an ex-imperialist Oriental like me could've ever been subordinate to another nation.

"Even me", I laughed.

"My, oh my! That's an interesting insight to Asia I've yet heard of.

"And who might this "leader of the continent" be, Honda?"

"Ah, that's an easy one. It was Yao", a sigh fluttered out of my throat as I leaned my head back against the wall, hugging my knees closer to my body. Yao was once my tributary emperor. And even though that couldn't be so anymore, he was still my emperor to this day, governing a part of me which was invisible to any maps.

Ivan sighed too, and something seemed to have jarred loose in the lilac of his eyes. For reasons I couldn't place a fingertip on, whatever it was had alerted sirens at the back of my head. "Then your earliest history must have been happier than mine", he murmured.

"But surely you had friends after that, didn't you?" I said, trying to relieve the dreary atmosphere engulfing him while simultaneously steering the conversation away from Yao.

"Of course", he bought it. "Though much, much later, Honda. Specifically just a century ago, when I made my union. That's when I started getting many, many friends!"

I nodded, understanding what he meant by "the union". Back when I was still an imperialist, I had seethed with envy for Ivan; for his ability to flourish his federation into something that my empire can never amount to in size. But now I was secretly disgusted. In fact, nowadays even a sliver of imperialism or my shameful past made me feel like gagging.

"It's still up, isn't it?" I asked him.

"Of course!" He smiled. "My federation grows and grows like a sunflower in a happy place, and I get more and more friends to keep me company. Even when I've done it so many times", he giggled at the thin air under his nose, "I can't help feeling fluttery inside whenever one more nation decides to join my circle of friends.

"And that's why I'm excited, Honda. I'm excited because you're my friend now", his fingertips brushed my bare shoulder blades. I recoiled without thinking, and he looked at me guiltily and said: "oh, I'm sorry Honda. I forgot you didn't like that."

"That's alright Ivan", I rubbed my forearms furtively. Did I have the heart to tell him I never said we were friends? Not because I didn't want to repent for my past and start being nice to him, but because I wasn't ready to swallow the guilt of being treated worlds better than a beast by my enemy.

"It's funny when I think about it, Honda."

I stared at him. I've had people telling me in the past that my eyes never did show very much, but beneath the impenetrable fog of brown, I was flabbergasted.

"We're friends now, even though I hadn't been playing nice."

"But Ivan!..."

"No Honda", he shushed me. "You don't have to tell me that I wasn't cheating. I knew I was cheating, and I knew I wasn't doing what a friend was supposed to do… I realized it tonight, when the guilt wouldn't let me fall asleep before I apologized to you and Yao." He fiddled uneasily with the fronds of his scarf. "So, um, I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry; for everything. For trying to separate you and Yao like that…"

"What?"

I squinted at him. A jumble of voices began screaming in my head at once, and a heavy weight had descended upon my lungs, making the feat of breathing impossible… Had I just heard what I think I heard from Ivan?

"Honda? You look confused", he paled.

"What?" I kicked the quilt off and kneeled before him. "Repeat that, please!"  
>"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"<br>"What for!"

"For trying to get you and Yao to break up!" He wailed. "Forgive me Honda! Forgive…"

Ivan's voice faded into white noise as I dissipated into my own little world. All in unison, an armada of questions rained over me: why would Ivan do such a thing if the wars were already over? Did Alfred know of this too? And my Yao; what about my Yao? Was this what he had been hiding from me all along?

And should I even feel hurt?

I scanned Ivan from beneath my curtain of fringe. The nation was telling me something; his lips were parting and closing frantically, and his pupils were dilated and frenzied. Then he reached out and clasped my shoulders with mitted hands, and I heard:

"Honda, please listen to me!"

And his voice faded away again. I listened to nothing; listened to nothing as an idea began churning and frothing where everything had once been smeared in grime and repentance. Should I even feel hurt? Yes; yes I should be feeling hurt, I realized. Betrayers, savages and sinners all deserved to feel hurt. I deserved nothing but hurt, and I will deserve nothing but hurt for the rest of my life. If a nation couldn't die, then I could at least limp the rest of my life in eternal suffering.

_The punishment was perfect_.

"Ivan."

He clamped his mouth shut. I looked at him once last time; then, with a grunt, rose from the mattress and hobbled to my feet.

"H-Honda? Where are you…"

"I want you to leave."

Deaf to his protests, I snatched him by the wrist and yanked him towards the door. Ivan rebelled, bucking and trying to free his hand of my grasp. But I only tugged harder, eventually shoving him out of the cabin.

Ivan, wide-eyed and crying in the gloomy hallway, pleaded: "you're not really mad at me again, are you! I-I don't hate you! Honda, please don't hate me either."

I must have looked like a demon, my fringe blotting out the light from the cabin to paint my visage in swaths of shadows. I glared at him; Ivan looked back, mitted hands clasped in prayer before him.

"I'll think about it."

And with those final words stifling the air between us forevermore, I slammed the door in his face.

* * *

><p>It'd been said that when a Japanese man told you "I'll think about it", he would never think of it at all.<p>

Yet I had spent the remaining hours of the dusk tossing and turning atop the ratty mattress, torn in half. One side of me whipped me all night with insults and sneers; black, close-cropped uniform and devilish smile; Yao's blood splattered from its forehead down to its loafers. "You deserve it! Look at you!" It cackled. "You're a beast! Slicing yourself out of his life will be the best thing that'll ever happened to him!"

But then the other side of me would pull me close and pet my hair with giving hands. The side of me who looked pristine and innocent in his kimono; dark eyes unperturbed and kind; the fragrance of freshly-cooked rice still lingering in his hair. "You're only hurting him more if you do it", it'd croon. "Move on, Kiku. The wars are over, and so should your guilt and self-punishment be. The tragedy was already more than enough to compensate. It's not too late to just forgive and forget, my dear."

But it would be pushed away by the other side, and the cycle would repeat itself till the morn. By the time I had managed to slip into a restless, empty sleep, the sunlight had filtered into the cabin from beyond the porthole, and the scramble and murmurs of day-life drawled from beyond the door.

Around noontime, an effervescent knock alerted me out of my sleep.

From bed, the silent "_creak_" of the door being parted taunted me, followed by a familiar voice humming. Frantically, I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to still be asleep and hoping he'd go away. If he left now, then I wouldn't have to go along with the plan.

Soon enough, I realized that it was futile hope.

"Kiku? I'm back, Kiku."

I tried to shrink into myself, making every spasm of muscle as slow as possible so that Yao's crafty eyes wouldn't catch me. But the voice simply chuckled warmly and murmured: "you know you can't lie to me, Kiku. Come on; wake up, sleepyhead. It's two in the afternoon."

_Go away Yao. Go away, I don't want to see you today, Yao. Go away, go away, go away_…

A warm hand rested on my shoulder. Out of impulse, I turned away with a yelp, burying my head under the quilt.

"Kiku?" The voice sounded more urgent now.

A tugging sensation obstructed the quilt. I tried to hang on in spite of the fact that I only had the grip of a thumb and an index finger to retaliate, but in the end, Yao had his way. I winced as the light from the port hole painted speckles of red in the darkness beneath my lids.

"Kiku, are you feeling ill?"

"Uh-uh", I grunted, feeling around for the quilt.

Yao flung it off of my bed altogether. "Uh, o—kay." He murmured. Then, he prompted in a cheerful voice: "are you feeling hungry?"

"Uh-uh."

"Thirsty?" The hope in his voice diminished by an octave.

"Uh-uh."

"Tired?"

"Uh-uh."

"_Love-struck by the magistrate?_"

"Uh-uh."

"Come on Honda Kiku; don't be that way around me!" He tried tickling me.

I slapped his hands away indignantly and flopped onto my stomach, burying my face into the pillow.

"Hmph", I could feel him frowning. "You're a feisty one today, aren't you?"

"Go away, Yao."

"No way!" The rusting metal frame uttered a moan as he plopped onto the rim of the mattress. "Not until you tell me what's wrong."  
>"Nothing's wrong. Go away."<p>

"Not moving anywhere."

"Go away!"

"I said not until you—"

"I SAID GO AWAY YAO!" I jolted out of the pillow—then, realizing what I had done, I faltered my gaze to the wrinkled bedspread beneath me.

Yao was silent for a while, before a nervous cough pierced my ears as he murmured: "Kiku?"

_Don't cry Kiku! Don't cry! Sinners don't deserve to cry_.

I gathered myself furtively to my knees and turned away, feigning interest at the armoire. My fingers wandered to rub my forearms, suddenly feeling chilly in spite of the balmy sea breeze.

"Kiku? Kiku, come look this way, please?"

No response met him.

"Did I do something to make you mad? You now I can never tell when I do. I-I'm sorry if I did."

I shook my head slowly, cringing into my arms. Why was it that plans like these had to be so fickle? They always sounded flawless when you pictured them in your head, but they're as impossible as scraping rust off of shrine bells once you started acting them out.

The cot groaned and squeaked as Yao edged his way closer to me. Gently, his broad hands clasped the sides of my cheeks and coaxed me into his spotlight once more.

And that's when I got my first good look at his face all day.

Yao looked horrendous, as if I had broken his heart a second time. Amber eyes glistened sincerely at me; the corners of his lips quivered feebly, as if he couldn't decide between whether to stay quiet or whether to say something to break the ice which had formed around us. Gently, he leaned over to lock lips.

I gasped at the warmth and the pressure which came with the gesture; things I had never gotten quite used to, despite having done it with Yao for ages past. If Yao wanted to get his way, then he was doing a very good job of it. My head was instantly numbed by the pleasure; a desire to stay this way for the rest of forever if given the choice. It was as if the kiss was slurring: "don't do it, Kiku! Don't do it, and you and I can stay this way for the rest of our lives. You want this just as much as I do; you know that, don't you? Even a sinner deserves a reward…"

_Reward._

_ … Reward._

That was a screwed lie.

I pushed Yao away and scrambled as far as the cot would allow me. By this time, Yao was frowning darkly; no longer were his eyes dewy and gentle, but they had turned as hard as granite. Out of the blue, he began to reach a hand out to me, and I fell for it, shrinking away from his outstretched fingers.

"What did I do to you this time, Kiku?" He more demanded coldly than asked me.

"Nothing", I tried to keep my composure.

"Then why don't you want me around anymore?"

"I'm just tired."

"You were more tired yesterday and the days before that than you are today, and you were perfectly fine with me then", he crawled off of bed and walked around to the other side, scooping me in his arms before I could escape to the other end again.

"I…I…" Yao laid me down atop the mattress with a gentleness that betrayed the frigid in his eyes.

"Why won't you tell me?"

"Please leave me be."

"NOT", he flung the quilt over me and tucked it to my chin, "until you tell me what's wrong."

We locked eyes for the longest few seconds of my life: Yao's stubborn, icy pair versus mine of chocolate indifference; before he marched back to the other end and slumped into the stool, eyeing me obstinately.

And still I refused to answer him. If I had planned to do it today, then why was I stalling time now? I closed my eyes, breathing deeply as I titled the back of my head into the pillow.

"It's about Alfred and Ivan, isn't it?"

My eyes flew open.

"No."

"But I can't think of any other reason why you're acting so cold to me now. In that case, I'm confronting them right this second", he made to get off of the stool, but I grabbed him in time and cried:

"It's not them Yao! I swear it's not them!"

"Then what is it! Heavens forbid, what is it Kiku!" He looked on the verge of tears.

Luckily for him, I had beat him to it. A stray teardrop cascaded down my cheeks, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand as I whimpered:

"I want to end this."

Yao turned to eye me queerly.

"I want to end this", I choked on the next wave of sobs, taking a deep breath so that they wouldn't come, ever.

"'I want to'… What do you want to end, Kiku?" He crouched by my bedside.

"Don't you understand?" My voice rose to the ceiling. Why did Yao have to make it so much harder than it already was for him? "I want to end _this_! Think for a second; what else is there left to end, Yao?"

"Humanity, the world, the moon, our immortal lives and your annoying attitude", he ticked it off by his fingers. "Go on and take your pick."

"YAO!" I lurched from on the cot. "You", I pointed a shaky finger to him. "And me", I averted its course to myself. "Have to stop it.

"Don't bother seeing me ever again."

Yao's eyes went as wide as maidens' mirrors. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to faint; cry or collapse dead on the floor, I couldn't be sure. After all, I had failed to witness the man he had become while I had been on a hiatus from his life.

But in no way was I prepared for what he would do next.

In less than a second, Yao had lunged onto me like a tiger its prey, tackling me against the wall with a hand to my shoulder. Then, jerking my chin forward, Yao began kissing me senseless.

I screamed my protests. Pushed and wailed and moaned—anything to get him to shove off. Nonetheless, no matter how much I punched him or what I called him, Yao pushed on, subduing me further with his lips and tongue. Pretty soon someone's tears were rolling into the almost non-existent gap between our mouths, and it tasted salty to my tongue; bitter to my heart.

"GET OFF ME, YOU CRAZY BASTARD!" I shrieked, not meaning a single word I said but invaded by a demon that wasn't my own. "GET OFF! GET—nggh—Ah!"

Yao broke the contact momentarily to catch his breath, eyes misty with lust darting to undress my torso.

That was my chance.

With a cry, I delivered a kick to his stomach, sending him sprawling back against the stool. Wide-eyed and mouth ajar, he was frozen on the spot as I crawled feebly away from the wall, my breath raspy and torn from my lungs as soon as I had managed to get an insufficient amount of it back in.

Then Yao roared:

"WHY NOW!"

"Because I said so, that's why!"

"Yao! Kiku! Is everythin' dandy in there? Looks like the two o' you are wranglin' bison from the sound of it…"

Yao stormed to the door and locked it behind him, his icy daggers never leaving me for even a second. I could hear Alfred's muffled cries demanding to be admitted, but I knew that there was nothing he could do at this point. He could whip out his gazillion-caliber semiautomatic and attempt to gun the door down, and it wouldn't have made a difference. The all-powerful Middle Kingdom was guarding the other side; before him an ex-imperial Oriental. And this was solely between them now; not him; not Ivan.

This was between a husband and his wife.

"Talk."

"I'm sick of this! I'm sick of everything, Yao!"

"And that's just it, isn't it?"

"Can't you see it? We're worlds away from each other now!"

"YOU'RE JUST SAYING THAT!"

"OR AM I!"

"YOU KNOW WE CAN STILL MAKE IT, KIKU! YOU KNOW WE CAN STILL SAVE THIS—"

"TELL ME, WANG YAO, WHAT IS THERE TO SAVE!"

"YOU'RE JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE YOU'VE FOUND NEW PEOPLE, _ISN'T IT_!"

I fell quiet with remorse. Yao was hyperventilating as bead after bead of tears cascaded down the side of his face.

"Tell me Kiku", he choked on a sob. "Tell me: what do they have that I don't! THAT WE DON'T!" He took a tipsy step towards me, nodding frantically. "We have children Kiku. REMEMBER NOW? So are you going to leave them too for the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful OCCIDENT?"

"Leave our kids out of this", I gasped.

"That's right", the venom is his voice was suffocating. "That's right isn't it! It had never been about the children in the first place.

"It's always about YOU!"

"That's not true!" I wanted to scream. But just as the first vowel was dangling off of my tongue, a thought struck me hard across the cheeks. If I told Yao the real reason why I didn't want him to have anything to do with me anymore, the fire will relinquish from his eyes. Yao will come running to me and tell me again and again how he wanted me to forget; how he wanted us to pretend for the rest of our lives that the horrors which had nicked us for the past century was just a distant dream. Was just irksome resonance from a past that we shouldn't even bother listening to anymore.

And years to come we might just return home hand-in-hand, to a house swarming with our three beautiful children; we will be a complete family again, and fix all we had broken in the wars together.

_And the cycle will repeat itself at square one_.

I didn't want that to happen. I knew that the only key to that loop was Honda Kiku. I was an abomination; a threat; something to fear and discern. That demon was still lurking within me, and who knew when it would resurface once more?

And who would it hurt the next time it did? It had nearly put Yao to his deathbed this time, so who will it slaughter mercilessly the next time? Yong Soo? Jia Long? Or my daughter?

_I can't let that happen to any of them._

So I clamped my mouth shut and strained to keep my tears in check and Yao loomed above me. "It always has to be about you ever since that war! It was YOUR retribution; YOUR betrayal; YOUR recuperation! Heck—the conclusion of the second world war was even held in YOUR HOME! And now you'd willingly leave me and the children for YOUR sake! You're so selfish it's disgusting."

"THAT'S RIGHT, ISN'T IT!" I snapped, unable to bear the insults anymore. Yao faltered on the spot upon seeing something in my eyes which I had never shown to anyone before; not even him.

Pure, churning inferno.

"That's right! I'm selfish!" I shrieked. "Oh _Amaterasu_, I am the most SELFISH MAN in this fucking world! I'm a demon, Wang Yao! Don't tell me you just knew that I'm a betrayer and a savage; A SINNER! I reek of evil and animosity, so that I am now an unfit wife; too ruthless and bloodthirsty to be their mothers! _DON'T YOU TELL ME YOU JUST KNEW THAT TODAY WANG YAO! I'M A SINNER!_"

Breathing hard, I allowed my frenzied stare to simmer down as I snarled: "all the more reason for you to leave me now."

Yao eyeballed me incredulously. Then his expression darkened once more, and he staggered back, seething: "I don't know what you are. I don't know where you came from, or what you've done to Kiku. But I know for a fact that you're not Honda Kiku… You're not the Honda Kiku I loved."

When I looked up, Yao had vanished from my cabin. Now all that was left was the open door, which made a slight "_tap-tap_" as the sea breeze serenaded it back and forth. I kneeled on my cot for a while just staring at it; hypnotized by the "_tap-tap… Tap-tap… Tap-tap…_". Trying to digest what had just happened between the only person I had ever loved that way in this whole wide world, and probably the only man I'll ever love that way for the rest of my life.

When I finally did come to my senses, I sprung from the cot with a scream and slammed the door shut, bolting it firmly behind me. Then I hurtled back to the mattress, to cry hysterically into the pillow.

"Let this be my last Divine Retribution. Let this be my punishment for hurting you, Wang Yao", I sobbed.

* * *

><p><strong>You know those stories people post up here, where Yao forgives Kiku a split second after the wars are gone and done with? Yeah, those stories... Personally, I think that's a pretty insensitive way of thinking. <strong>

**I mean, it's not like I don't want Yao and Kiku to go back into amiable terms as soon as possible, but I don't think that's being very considerate to Yao. Come ON people! The poor man had just been scarred, beaten, battered, bruised, broken-hearted and heaven-knows-what-else, and he's still expected to be immediately forgiving? It's like telling a man who had narrowly escaped arson to shove off into a firefighters' simulator as soon as he's free from medications. So while I still wanted to preserve Yao's paternal, righteous personality in this story, I also wanted to highlight the hurt he and Kiku had to endure for a long, long time proceeding the war. But that's just my third-person opinion. What about yours?**

**Nevertheless, what has been dramatized and illustrated for you in the last four chapters of this story were occurrences which happened AEONS ago. So who's up for a change in scenario? Anyone? Anyone at all? :) ****They say time is the best healer there is.**

**... But _yeah_. If there's anything I learned from this, it's that tragedies are definitely not my forte. BACK TO THE FLUFFLIES!**

**-Plumeria-hi**


	5. Footnotes and References

**Footnotes**

**[1]** During the period of Occidental conquest, two wars had broken out between Imperial Britain and Imperial France against Qing dynasty-China, after the latter had attempted to execute illegal imports of opium drugs from British India. Here it refers to the first war (1839-1842), which was solely between Imperial Britain and Qing-China alone, and ended with the ceding of Hong Kong to Imperial Britain during the year 1841.

**[2]** Anh Phuong here refers to Vietnam, who was annexed by Imperial France in the 1860s.

**[3]** Traditional sliding doors of Japan

**[4] **_Amaterasu_, goddess of the Sun and weaving, is the cardinal deity in the _Shinto _religion.

**[5]** Referring to the scuffle between medieval Japan and the Occident (prominently Portugal, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands – here, I have referred to him by Mogen) prior to Japan's isolation (c. 1654). Because the Occidentals had brought with them missionaries, the _bakufu _at the time began to suspect that the foreigners would be the catalyst of European conquest over Japan, and thus they were gradually driven out of the country, those who were still in the nation were barred from the outside (and the ones lingering outside, as a consequence, unable to return home on most occasions), and contact with the world was only restricted to the Netherlands, China and Korea. Yes, ladies and gentries: if Mogen tries to gloat the next time that he was the _only one_ who had contacts with Japan during his isolation period, you tell him he's _wrong_.

**[6]** Deities of the Japanese _Shinto _sect; can mean the higher deities or the still-worshipped apparitions down on Earth who make their presence announced every time a sense of "wow" strikes a person unexpectedly. Recently, _kami_ has also been attributed to "God"… I know, it's confusing.

**[7]**The '_kamikaze_', or 'Divine Wind', was a tempest which had saved Japan while he had been at the brink of Mongolian invasion (c. 1270's-1280's). Also, Japan's current and imperial flag, which boasts a red sun against a white background, are based on the _Shinto_ prayer flags and banners which were given to warriors as a talisman before they entered battle. The talisman depicts the goddess _Amaterasu _(the red sun in the middle of the flag).

This flag had only came to symbolize Imperial Japan as an empire during the Meiji era, and _kamikaze _became a term adopted for suicide pilots later on. But of course, since Japan had not even casted his isolationist policy aside when this story had taken place, it was not possible that he had meant for the flag _or _the suicide planes by telling Yao of the Divine Wind or _Amaterasu_. Hence, it is safe to assume that Japan had imagined his army would involve literate, roaring sea storms under the command of the Sun goddess present herself.

**[8]** Referring to one of the methods Medieval Japan had used to drive away the Occidental powers: that is, making them trod on depictions of Christ and crucifixes, which was rather rancid of him.

**[9] **A coat worn over a kimono. You see Japan wear this in canon most of the time.

**[10] **The _kimono_ is the traditional Japanese garb. Contrary to pop belief it is asexual (but the male and female styles do tend to differ, and then there are styles for hostesses, _bushido_, and… Yeah, you get the picture). The _yukata_ is a branch from the _kimono_. They both have virtually similar designs, but only that the _yukata _is made of lighter material and suitable for the heat of the summer season. The _haori _was explained in point 9.

**[11] **Not true, just in case anyone would like to know. Just my hateful way of expressing the fad for all things Occidental that was occurring at the time.

**[12] **Sun Tzu was a prominent military genius, who lived and thrived in the rumble-tumble military tumult known as ancient China (specifically the Spring and Autumn period, which lasted from the 4th to 7th century BC). His works on "the Art of War" are still studied by military men today.

**[13] **This outline of events was based on the real First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95 AD). The treaty Kiku will refer to later is the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

**[14] **According to "_Japan; the Story of a Nation_" (REISCHAUER, Edwin O., 2004), a must-read for all Japanese history fans and a ChuNi shipper's dreams come true, ancient Chinese accounts of Japan had dubbed him the 'queen's country', probably because of the first Emperor Jimmu's line of ancestry which traces back to _Amaterasu _herself. On a side note, the book had also mentioned that this could denote Japan being an originally matriarchal society, later influenced into a patriarchal state by China. I'll leave that last one to your interpretation.

**[15]** The fall of the three major axis powers, in chronological order, were as follows: 1) Imperial Italy, who surrendered during the September of 1943 after statesman Benito Mussolini was overthrown during the 35th of July, 2) Imperial Germany, who surrendered on May, 1945 (making Kiku "the sole survivor by the end of the fifth month") after chancellor Adolf Hitler committed suicide on the 30th of April, and 3) Imperial Japan, after the 1945 tragedy that was the bombing of Hiroshima city and the prefecture of Nagasaki on August, concluding the second world war.

**[16] **菊 = Ju (Chinese) (as in '菊花'; 'Ju Hua') = Kiku (Japanese) = Kiku's name = chrysanthemum.

**[17]** Before the 1945 tragedy, Imperial Japan had received an offer from the US, prompting him to surrender; a prompt which was declined.

**[18] **(credits to this year's Chinese lessons), in mandarin, prepositions like '被' (bei) and '让' (rang) are used to indicate a passive voice. For instance, in the sentence '意大利的画儿让人买走了' (yi da li de hua'er rang ren mai zou le); 'Italy's painting has been sold'.

**[19] **Japan had surrendered during the 15th of August, six days after Nagasaki was raided, under concerns that the US military would target Tokyo (and the emperor) next. However, the surrender was only official the next month, on September the 2nd, aboard the _Us Missouri_ in Tokyo Bay (I itch to note that the vessel the Allies and Japan occupied in chapter 3 is a theoretical setting though, for there were no records in history that one ship had been deported just to house a bunch of nations and their booze).

**[20] **Here I refer to the United Nations, a league established in 1945 to keep the peace.

* * *

><p><strong>References<strong>

1) – _Sun Tzu; The Art of War_. Oxford, United Kingdom, 2005. Watskin Publishing Limited.

2) ADAM, Simon. 2004. _World War II_. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited.

3) History of nations . net, 2004. _History of Japan_. (Updated 2004). Available at: |h|t|t|p|:|/|/|w|w|w|.|h|i|s|t|o|r|y|o|f|n|a|t|i|o|n|s|.|n|e|t|/|a|s|i|a|/|j|a|p|a|n|/|h|t|m|l| (last accessed 17 October 2014).

4) REISCHAUER, Edwin O. 2004. _Japan; The Story of a Nation_. 4th ed. Singapore: Tuttle Publishing.


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